IN THE MORNING OF TIME

IN THE MORNING OF TIME

BY

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

Author of "The Kindred of the Wild, " etc. 

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1922, by

Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

 CHAPTER PAGE I The World Without Man 1 II The King of the Triple Horn 20 III The Finding of Fire 41 IV The Children of the Shining One 70 V The Puller-Down of Trees 97 VI The Battle of the Brands 123 VII The Rescue of A-ya 149 VIII The Bending of the Bow 174 IX The Destroying Splendor 198 X The Terrors of the Dark 219 XI The Feasting of the Cave Folk 243 XII On the Face of the Waters 259 XIII The Fear 278 XIV The Lake of Long Sleep 295

IN THE MORNING OF TIME

IN THE MORNING OF TIME

CHAPTER I

THE WORLD WITHOUT MAN

It lay apparently afloat on the sluggish, faintly discolored tide--aplacid, horse-faced, shovel-nosed head, with bumpy holes for ears andimmense round eyes of a somewhat anxious mildness. 

The anxiety in the great eyes was not without reason, for their ownerhad just arrived in the tepid and teeming waters of this estuary, andthe creatures which he had already seen about him were both unknownand menacing. But the inshore shallows were full of water-weeds of arankness and succulence far beyond anything he had enjoyed in his oldhabitat, and he was determined to secure himself a place here. 

From time to time, as some new monster came in sight, the ungainlyhead would shoot up amazingly to a distance of five or ten, or evenfifteen feet, on a swaying pillar of a neck, in order to get a betterview of the stranger. Then it would slowly sink back again to itsrepose on the water. 

The water at this point was almost fresh, because the estuary, thoughfully two miles wide, was filled with the tide of the great riverrolling slowly down from the heart of the continent. The further shorewas so flat that nothing could be seen of it but an endless, palegreen forest of giant reeds. But the nearer shore was skirted, at adistance of perhaps half a mile from the water, by a rampart ofabrupt, bright, rust-red cliffs. The flat land between the watersideand the cliffs, except for the wide strip of beach, was clothed withan enormous and riotous growth of calamaries, tree-ferns, cane andpalm, which rocked and crashed in places as if some colossal wayfarerswere pushing through them. Here and there along the edge of the cliffssat tall beings with prodigious, saw-toothed beaks, like some speciesof bird conceived in a nightmare. 

Far out across the water one of these creatures was flapping slowly infrom the sea. Its wings--eighteen feet across from tip to tip--werenot the wings of a bird, but of a bat or a hobgoblin. It had dreadful, hand-like claws on its wing-elbows; and its feet were those of alizard. 

As this startling shape came flapping shoreward, the head afloat uponthe water eyed it with interest, but not, as it seemed, with any greatapprehension. Yet it certainly looked formidable enough to excitemisgivings in most creatures. Its flight was not the steady, evenwinging of a bird, but spasmodic and violent. It came on at a heightof perhaps twenty feet above the sluggish tide, and its immense, circular eyes appeared to take no notice of the strange head thatwatched it from the water's surface. It seemed about to pass a littleto one side, when suddenly, with a hoarse, hooting cry, it swerved andswooped, and struck at the floating head with open jaws. 

Swift as was that unexpected attack, the assailant struck nothing buta spot of foam where the head had disappeared. Simultaneously with thelightning disappearance, there was a sudden boiling of the water someeighty-odd feet away. But the great bird-lizard was either too furiousto notice this phenomenon or not sagacious enough to interpret it. Flopping into the air again, and gnashing his beak-like jaws withrage, he kept circling about the spot in heavy zigzags, expecting theharmless looking head to reappear. 

All at once his expectations were more than realized. The head notonly reappeared, but on a towering leather-colored column of a neck itshot straight into the air to a height of twenty feet. The big, placideyes were now sparkling with anger. The flat, shovel jaws were gapingopen. They seized the swooping foe by the root of the tail, and, inspite of screeches and wild flappings, plucked him down backwards. Atthe surface of the water there was a convulsive struggle, and the widewings were drawn clean under. 

For several minutes the water seethed and foamed, and little waves ranclattering up the beach, while the owner of the harmless-looking headtrod his assailant down and crushed him among the weeds of the bottom. Then the foam slowly crimsoned, and the mauled, battered body of thegreat bird-lizard came up again; for the owner of the mysterious headwas a feeder on delicate weeds and succulent green-stuff only, andwould eat no blood-bearing food. The body was still struggling, andthe vast, dark, broken wings spread themselves in feeble spasms on thesurface. But they were not left to struggle long. 

The water, in the distance, had been full of eager spectators ofthe fight, and now it boiled as they rushed in upon the disabledprey. Ravenous, cavern-jawed, fishlike beasts, half-porpoise, half-alligator, swarmed upon the victim, tearing at it and at eachother. Some bore off trailing mouthfuls of dark wing-membrane, others more substantial booty, while the rest fought madly in thevortex of discolored foam. 

At the beginning of the fray the grim figures perched along the redramparts of the cliff had shown signs of excitement, lifting theirhigh shoulders and half unfolding the stiff drapery of their wings. Asthey saw their fellow overwhelmed they launched themselves from theirperch and came hooting hoarsely over the rank, green tops of the palmsand feathery calamaries. Swooping and circling they gathered over thehideous final struggle, and from time to time one or another woulddrop perpendicularly downward to stab the crown or the face of one ofthe preoccupied fish-beasts with his trenchant beak. Such of thefish-beasts as were thus disabled were promptly torn to pieces anddevoured by their companions. 

Some fifty feet away, nearer shore, the harmless-looking head whichhad been the source and inspirer of all this bloody turmoil laywatching the scene with discontent in its round, wondering eyes. Slowly it reared itself once more to a height of eight or ten feetabove the water, as if for better inspection of the combat. Then, asif not relishing the neighborhood of the fish-beasts, it slowly sankagain and disappeared. 

Immediately a heavy swirling, a disturbance that stretched over adistance of nearly a hundred feet, began to travel shoreward. Itgrew heavier and heavier as the water grew shallower. Then aleather-colored mountain of a back heaved itself up through thesmother and a colossal form, that would make the hugest elephant apigmy, came ponderously forth upon the beach. 

The body of this amazing being was thrice or four times the bulk ofthe mightiest elephant. It stood highest--a good thirteen feet--overthe haunches (which were supported on legs like columns), and slopedabruptly to the lower and lighter-built fore-shoulders. The neck waslike a giraffe's, but over twenty feet in length to its juncture withthe mild little head, which looked as if Nature had set it there as apleasantry at the expense of the titanic body. The tail, enormous atthe base and tapering gradually to a whip-lash, trailed out to adistance of nearly fifty feet. As its owner came ashore, thistremendous tail was gathered and curled in a semi-circle at hisside--perhaps lest the delicate tip, if left too distant, might fall aprey to some significant but agile marauder. 

For some minutes the colossus (he was one of the Dinosaurs, orTerrible Lizards, and known as a Diplodocus) remained on all-fours, darting his sinuous neck inquiringly in all directions, andsnatching here and there a mouthful of the rank tender herbage whichgrew among the trunks of fern and palm. Apparently the spot was tohis liking. Here was a wide beach, sunlit and ample, whereon to baskat leisure. There were the warm and weed-choked shallows wherein topasture, to wallow at will, to hide his giant bulk from his enemies ifthere should be found any formidable enough to make hiding advisable. Swarms of savage insects, to be sure, were giving him a hotreception--mosquitoes of unimaginable size, and enormous stingingflies which sought to deposit their eggs in his smooth hide, but withhis giraffe-like neck he could bite himself where he would, and thelithe lash of his tail could flick off tormentors from any cornerof his anatomy. 

Meanwhile, the excitement off-shore had died down. The harsh hootingsof the bird-lizards had ceased to rend the air as the dark wingshurtled away to seek some remoter or less disturbed hunting-ground. Then across the silence came suddenly a terrific crashing of branches, mixed with gasping cries. Startled, the diplodocus hoisted himselfupon his hind-quarters, till he sat up like a kangaroo, supported andsteadied by the base of his huge tail. In this position his head, forty feet above the earth, overlooked the tops of all but the tallesttrees. And what he saw brought the look of anxiety once more into hisround, saucer-eyes. 

Hurling itself with desperate, plunging leaps through the rankgrowths, and snapping the trunks of the brittle tree-ferns in its pathas if they had been cauliflowers, came a creature not unlike himself, but of less than half the size, and with neck and tail of onlymoderate length. This creature was fleeing in frantic terror fromanother and much smaller being, which came leaping after it like agiant kangaroo. Both were plainly dinosaurs, with the lizard tail andhind-legs; but the lesser of the two, with its square, powerful headand tiger-fanged jaws, and the tremendous, rending claws on its shortforearms, was plainly of a different species from the greatherb-eaters of the dinosaurian family. It was one of the smallermembers of that terrible family of carnivorous dinosaurians whichruled the ancient cycad forests as the black-maned lion rules theRhodesian jungles to-day. The massive iguanodon which fled before itso madly, though of fully thrice its bulk, had reason to fear it asthe fat cow fears a wolf. 

A moment more, and the dreadful chase, with a noise of raucous groansand pantings, burst forth into the open, not fifty feet from where thecolossus stood watching. Almost at the watcher's feet the fugitive wasovertaken. With a horrid leap and a hoot of triumph, the pursuersprang upon its neck and bore it to the ground, where it lay bellowinghoarsely and striking out blunderingly with the massive, horn-tippedspur which armed its clumsy wrist. The victor tore madly at its throatwith tooth and claw, and presently its bellowing subsided to ahideous, sobbing gurgle. 

The diplodocus, meanwhile, had been looking down upon the scene withhalf-bewildered apprehension. These creatures were insignificant insize, to be sure, as compared with his own colossal stature, but thesmaller one had a swift ferocity which struck terror to his dullheart. 

Suddenly a red wrath mounted to his small and sluggish brain. Histail, as we have seen, was curled in a half-circle at his side. Now hebent his body with it. For an instant his whole bulk quivered with theextraordinary tension. Then, like a bow released, the bent body sprangback. The tail (and it weighed at least a ton) struck the victor andthe victim together with an annihilating shock, and swept them cleanaround beneath the visitor's feet. 

Down he came upon them at once, with the crushing effect of a hundredsteam pile-drivers; and for the next few minutes his panicky rageexpended itself in treading the two bodies into a shapeless mass. Thenhe slowly backed off down into the water where the weedy growths werethickest, till once more his whole form was concealed except theinsignificant head. This he reared among the swaying tufts of the"mares' tails, " and waited to see what strange thing would happennext. 

He had not long to wait. That hideous, mangled heap there, sweatingblood in the noon sun, seemed to have some way of making its presenceknown. Crashing sounds arose in different parts of the forest, andpresently some half-dozen of the leaping, kangaroo-like flesh-eatersappeared. 

They were of varying sizes, from ten or twelve feet in length toeighteen or twenty, and they eyed each other with jealous hostility. But one glance at the weltering heap showed them that here wasfeasting abundant for them all. With a chorus of hoarse cries theycame hopping forward and fell upon it. 

Presently two vast shadows came overhead, hovering a moment, and apair of the great bird-lizards dropped upon the middle of the heap. Hooting savagely, with wings half uplifted, they struck about themwith their terrible beaks till they had secured room for themselves atthe banquet. Other unbidden guests came leaping from among thethickets; and in a short time there was nothing left of the carcassesexcept two naked skeletons, dragged apart and half dismembered bymighty teeth. In the final mêlée one of the smaller revellers washimself pounced upon and devoured. 

Then, as if by consent of a mutual distrust, the throng drew quicklyapart, each eyeing his neighbor warily, and scattered into the woods. Only the two grim bird-lizards remained, seeming to have a sort ofunderstanding or partnership, or possibly being a mated pair. Theypried into the cartilages and between the joints of the skeletons withthe iron wedges of their beaks, till there was not another tit-bit tobe enjoyed. Then, hooting once more with satisfaction, they spreadtheir batlike vanes and flapped darkly off again to their redwatch-tower on the cliff. 

When all was once more quiet the giant visitor fell to pasturing amongthe crisp and tender water-weeds. It took a long time to fill hiscavernous paunch by way of that slender neck of his, and when he wassatisfied he went composedly to sleep, his body perfectly concealedunder the water, his head resting on a little islet of matted reeds ina thicket of "mares' tails. " When he woke up again the sun washalf-way down to the west, and the beach glowed hotly in the afternoonlight. Everything was drenched in heavy stillness. The visitor made uphis drowsy mind that he must leave his hiding-place and go and bask inthat delicious warmth. 

He was just bestirring himself to carry out his purpose, when oncemore a swaying in the rank foliage of the cycads caught his vigilanteye. Discreetly he drew back into hiding, the place being, as he hadfound it, so full of violent surprises. 

Suddenly there emerged upon the beach a monster even more extraordinaryin appearance than himself. It was about thirty-five feet in length, and its ponderous bulk was supported on legs so short and bowed thatit crawled with its belly almost dragging the ground. Its small head, which it carried close to the earth, was lizard-like, shallow-skulled, feeble-looking, and its jaws cleft back past the stupid eyes. Infact, it was an inoffensive-looking head for such an imposing body. At the base of the head began a system of defensive armor thatlooked as if it might be proof against artillery. Up over theshoulders, over the mighty arch of the back, and down over the haunchesas far as the middle of the ponderous tail, ran a series of immense flatplates of horn, with pointed tips and sharpened edges. The largest ofthese plates, those that covered the center of the back, were eachthree feet in height, and almost of an equal breadth. Where thediminished plates came to an end at the middle of the tail, theirplace was taken by eight immense, needle-pointed spines, set in pairs, of which the chief pair had a length of over two feet. The monster'shide was set thick with scales and knobs of horn, brilliantlycolored in black, yellow, and green, that his grotesque bulk mightbe less noticeable to his foes among the sharp shadows and patchy lightsof the fern jungles where he fed. 

The sluggish giant moved nervously, glancing backwards as he came, andseemed intent upon reaching the water. In a few moments his anxietywas explained. Leaping in splendid bounds along his broad trail cametwo of those same ferocious flesh-eaters whom the great watcher amongthe reeds so disliked. They ranged up one on each side of thestegosaur, who had halted at their approach, stiffened himself, anddrawn his head so far back into the loose skin of his neck that onlythe sharp, chopping beak projected from under the first armor-plate. One of the pair threatened him from the front, as if to engross hisattention, while the other pounced upon one of his massive, bowedhind-legs, as if seeking to drag it from beneath him and roll him overon his side. 

But at this instant there was a clattering of the plated hide, andthat armed tail lashed out with lightning swiftness, like aporcupine's. There was a tearing screech from the rash flesh-eater, and he was plucked back sidewise, all four feet in air, deeply impaledon three of those gigantic spines. While he clawed and writhed, struggling to twist himself free, his companion sprang hardily to therescue. She hurled herself with all her weight and strength full uponthe stegosaur's now unprotected flank. So tremendous was the impactthat, with a frightened grunt, he was rolled clean over on his side. But at the same time his sturdy forearms clutched his assailant, andso crushed, mauled and tore her that she was glad to wrench herselfaway. 

Coughing and gasping, she bounded backwards out of reach; and then shesaw that her mate, having wriggled off the spines, was dragginghimself up the beach toward the forest, leaving a trail of bloodbehind him. She followed sullenly, having had more than enough of theventure. The triumphant stegosaur rolled himself heavily back upon hisfeet, grunted angrily, clattered his armored plates, jerked histerrible tail from side to side as if to see that it was still inworking order, and went lumbering off to another portion of the wood, having apparently forgotten his purpose of taking to the water. As hewent, one of the grim bird-lizards from the cliff swooped down andhovered, hooting over his path, apparently disappointed at histriumph. 

The watcher in the reeds, on the other hand, was encouraged by theresult of the combat. He began to feel a certain dangerous contemptfor those leaping flesh-eaters, in spite of their swiftness andferocity. He himself, though but an eater of weeds, had trodden oneinto nothingness, and now he had seen two together overthrown and putto flight. With growing confidence he came forth from his hiding, stalked up the beach, coiled his interminable tail beside him, and laydown to bask his dripping sides in the full blaze of the sun. 

The colossus was at last beginning to feel at home in his newsurroundings. In spite of the fact that this bit of open beach, overlooked by the deep green belt of jungle and the rampart of redcliffs, appeared to be a sort of arena for titanic combats, he beganto have confidence in his own astounding bulk as a defense against allfoes. What matter his slim neck, small head and feeble teeth, whenthat awful engine of his tail could sweep his enemies off their feet, and he could crush them by falling upon them like a mountain! A pairof the great bird-lizards flapped over him, hooting malignantly andstaring down upon him with their immense, cold eyes, but he hardlytook the trouble to look up at them. 

Warmed and well fed, his eyes half-sheathed in their membraneous lids, he gazed out vacantly across the waving herbage of the shallows, across the slow, pale tides whose surface boiled from time to timeabove the rush of some unseen giant of a shark or ichthyosaur. 

In the heavy heat of the afternoon the young world had become verystill. The bird-lizards, all folded in their wings, sat stiff andmotionless along the ramparts of red cliff. The only sounds were thehiss of those seething rushes far out on the tide, the sudden droninghum of some great insect darting overhead, or the occasional softclatter of the long, crisp cycad leaves as a faint puff of hot airlifted them. 

At the back of the beach, where the tree-ferns and the calamaries grewrankest, the foliage parted noiselessly at a height of perhaps twentyfeet from the ground, and a dreadful head looked forth. Its jaws wereboth long and massive, and armed with immense, curved teeth likescimitars. Its glaring eyes were overhung by eaves of bony plate, andfrom the front of its broad snout rose a single horn, long and sharp. For some minutes this hideous apparition eyed the unconscious colossusby the waterside. Then it came forth from the foliage and creptnoiselessly down the beach. 

Except for its horned snout and armored eyes, this monster was notunlike in general type to those other predatory dinosaurs which hadalready appeared upon the scene. But it was far larger, approachingthirty-five feet in length, and more powerfully built in proportion toits size; and the armory of its jaws was more appalling. With astealthy but clumsy-looking waddle, which was nevertheless soundlessas a shadow, and his huge tail curled upwards that it might not dragand rattle the stones, he crept down until he was within some fiftyfeet or more of the drowsing colossus. 

Some premonition of peril, at this moment, began to stir in the heavybrain of the colossus, and he lifted his head apprehensively. In thesame instant the horned giant gathered himself, and hurled himselfforward. In two prodigious leaps he covered the distance thatseparated him from his intended prey. The coiled tail of the colossuslashed out irresistibly, but the assailant cleared it in his spring, fell upon the victim's shoulders, and buried his fangs in the base ofthat columnar neck. 

The colossus, for the first time, was overwhelmed with terror. He gavevent to a shrill, bleating bellow--an absurdly inadequate utterance toissue from this mountainous frame--writhed his neck in snaky folds, and lashed out convulsively with the stupendous coils of his tail. Buthe could not loosen that deep grip, or the clutch of those ironclaws. 

In spite of the many tons weight throttling his neck, he rearedhimself aloft, and strove to throw himself over upon his assailant. But the marauder was agile, and eluded the crushing fall withoutloosing his grip. Then, bleating frightfully, till the soundsre-ëchoed from the red cliffs and set all the drowsing bird-lizardslifting their wings, he plunged down into the tide and bore hisdreadful adversary out of sight beneath a smother of ensanguinedfoam. 

Now, the horned giant was himself a powerful swimmer and quite at homein the water, but in this respect he was no match for his quarry. Refusing to relinquish his hold, he was borne out into deep water; andthere the colossus, becoming all at once agile and swift, succeeded inrolling over upon him. Forced thus to loose his grip, he gave onelong, ripping lunge with his horn, deep into the victim's flank, andthen writhed himself from under. The breath quite crushed out of him, he was forced to rise to the surface for air. There he rested, recovering his self-possession, reluctant to give up the combat, buteven more reluctant to expose himself to another such mauling in thedepths. As he hesitated, about a hundred feet away he saw the mildlittle head of the colossus, apparently floating on the tide, andregarding him anxiously. That decided him. With a crashing bellow ofrage and a sweep of his powerful tail he darted at the inoffensivehead. But it vanished instantly, and a sudden tremendous turmoil, developing into a wake that lengthened out with the speed of atorpedo-boat, showed him the hopelessness of pursuit. Turningabruptly, he swam back to the shore and sulkily withdrew into thethickets to seek some less unmanageable quarry. 

The colossus, so deeply wounded that his trail threw up great clotsand bubbles of red foam, swam onward several miles up the estuary. Herealized now that that patch of sunny beach was just a death-trap. Butin the middle of the estuary, far out from either shore, far removedfrom the unseen, lurking horrors of the fern forests, spread acre uponacre of drowned marsh, overgrown with tall green reeds and feathery"mares' tails. " Through these stretches of marsh he ploughed his way, half-swimming, half-wading, and felt that here he might find a saferefuge as well as an unfailing pasturage. But the anguish of hiswounds urged him still onwards. 

Beyond the reed-beds he came to a long, narrow islet of wet sand, naked to the sun. This appeared to him the very refuge he was craving, a spot where he could lie secure and lick his hurts. He draggedhimself out upon it eagerly. Not until he had gained the very centerof it did he notice how his ponderous feet sank in it at every stride. As soon as he halted he felt the treacherous sands sucking him down. In terror he struggled to free himself, to regain the water. But nowthe sands had a grip upon him, and his efforts only engulfed him themore swiftly. He reared upon his hind legs, and immediately foundhimself swallowed to the haunches. He fell forward again, and sank tohis shoulder-blades. And then, the convulsive thrashings of his tailhurling the sands in every direction, he lifted his head and bleatedpiteously. 

The struggle had already drawn the dreadful eyes of those grim, foldedfigures perched along the cliff-tops miles away; and now, as if inanswer to his cry they came fluttering darkly over him. Seeing hishelplessness, they flapped down upon him with hoots of exultation. Their vast beaks tore at his helpless back, and stabbed at the swiftlywrithing convolutions of his neck. One, more heedless than hisfellows, came within reach of the thrashing tail, and was dashed, halfstunned, to earth, where the sands got him in their hold before hecould recover himself. With dreadful screeches, he was sucked down, but his fellows paid no attention to his fate. And meanwhile, in aring about the islet, not daring to come near for terror of thequicksand, crocodiles and alligators and ichthyosaurs, with upturned, gaping snouts, watched the struggle greedily. 

As the lower part of his neck was drawn down into the quicksand, thecolossus lost the power to move his head quickly enough to evade theattacks of his horrid assailants. A moment more, and he was blinded. Then he felt his head enfolded in the strangling membranes of wingsand borne downwards. Once or twice the convulsions of his neck threwhis enemies off, and the bleeding, sightless head reëmerged to view. 

But not only his force, but his will to struggle, was fast ebbingaway. Presently, with a thunderous, gasping sob, the last breath lefthis mighty lungs, and his head dropped on the sand. It was troddenunder in an instant; and then, afraid of being engulfed themselves, the hooting revellers abandoned it, to crowd struggling upon thearched hump of the back. Here they tore and gorged and quarreled till, some fifteen minutes later, their last foothold sank beneath them. Then, with dripping beaks and talons, they all flapped back to theircliffs; and slowly the fluent sand smoothed itself to shiningcomplacency over the tomb of the diplodocus, hiding and sealing awaythe stupendous skeleton for half a million years. 

CHAPTER II

THE KING OF THE TRIPLE HORN

It was a little later in the Morning of Time--later by perhaps sometwo or three hundred thousand years. Monstrous mammals now held swayover the fresh, green round of the young earth, so exuberant in heryouthful vigor that she could not refrain from flooding the Polesthemselves with a tropical luxuriance of flower and tree. Thesupremacy of the Giant Reptiles had passed. 

A few representatives of their most colossal and highly-specializedforms still survived, still terrible and supreme in those vast, steaming, cane-clothed savannahs which most closely repeated theconditions of an earlier age. But Nature, pleased with her experimentsin the more promising mammalian type, had turned her back upon themafter her fashion, and was coldly letting them die out. Her failures, however splendid, have always found small mercy at her hands. 

But it was little like a failure he looked, the giant who now heavedhis terrible, three-horned front from the lilied surface of the lagoonwherein he had been wallowing, and came ponderously ploughing his wayashore. As he emerged upon dry ground, he halted--with the tip of hismassive, lizard-like tail still in the water--and shook a shower fromthe hollows of his vast and strangely armored head. 

His eyes, coldly furious, and set in a pair of goggle-like projectionsof horn, peered this way and that, as if suspecting the neighborhoodof a foe. His gigantic snout--horned, cased in horn, and hooked likethe beak of a parrot--he lifted high, sniffing the heavy air. Then, asif to end his doubts by either drawing or daunting off the unknownenemy, he opened his grotesquely awful mouth and roared. The hugesound that exploded from his throat was something between the bellowof an alligator and the coughing roar of a tiger, but of infinitelyvaster volume. 

The next moment, as if in deliberate reply to the challenge, animmense black beast stepped from behind a thicket of pea-green bamboo, and stood scrutinizing him with wicked little pig-like eyes. 

It was the old order confronted by the new, the latest most terribleand perhaps most efficient of the titanic but vanishing race of theDinosaurs, face to face with one of those monstrous mammalian formsupon which Nature was now trying her experiments. 

And the place of this meeting was not unfitted to such a portentousencounter. The further shore of the lagoon was partly a swamp ofrankest growth, partly a stretch of savannah clothed with richcane-brake and flowering grasses that towered fifteen or twenty feetinto the air. But the hither shore was of a hard soil mixed with sand, carpeted with a short, golden-green herbage, and studded with clumpsof bamboo, jobo, mango and mahogany, with here and there a thicket ofcanary-flowered acacia, bristling with the most formidable of thorns. 

They were not altogether ill-matched, these two colossal protagonistsof the Saurian and the Mammal. The advantage of bulk lay altogetherwith the Dinosaur, the three-horned King of all the Lizard kind. Hisarmament, too, whether for offense or for defense, was distinctly themore formidable. Fully twenty feet in length, and perhaps eight feethigh at the crest of the massively-rounded back, he was of ponderousbreadth, and moved ponderously on legs like columns. 

His splotched brown and yellow hide was studded along the neck andshoulders with pointed knobs of horn. His enormous, fleshy tail, someseven feet long and nearly two feet thick at the base, tapered verygradually to a thick tip, and dragged on the ground behind him. Butthe most amazing thing about this King of the Lizards was hismonstrous and awe-inspiring head. 

Wedge-shaped from the tip of its cruel parrot-beak to its spreading, five-foot-wide base, its total length was well over seven feet. Itsthree horns, one on the snout and two standing out straight forwardfrom the forehead just above the eyes, were immensely thick at thebase and fined down smoothly to points of terrible keenness. The oneon the snout was something over a foot in length, while the brow pairwere nearly three feet long. 

Almost from the roots of these two terrific weapons protruded the hugehorn goggles which served as sockets for the great, cold, implacablelizard-eyes. Behind the horns, outspreading like a vast ruff fromthree to four feet wide upwards and laterally, slanted a smooth, polished shield of massive shell like the carapace of a giant turtle, protecting the neck and shoulders from any imaginable attack. 

The antagonist who had come in answer to the giant's challenge wasless extravagant in appearance and more compact in form. He was notmuch over a dozen feet in length, but this length owed nothing to thetail, which was a mere wriggling pendant. He was, perhaps, seven feethigh, very sturdy in build, but not mountainous like his terriblechallenger. His legs and feet were something like those of anelephant, and he looked capable of a deadly alertness in action. But, as in the case of the King Dinosaur, it was his head that gave him hischief distinction. Long, massive and blunt-nosed, it was armed notonly with six horns, set in pairs, but also with a pair of deadly, downward-pointing tusks--like those of a walrus, but much shorter, sharper and more effective. 

Of the six horns, the first pair, set on the tip of the broad snout, were mere bony points, of no use as weapons, and employed by theirowner for rooting in the turf after the fashion of a tuber-huntingpig. The second pair, set about the middle of the long face, just overthe eyes, were about eighteen inches in length, and redoubtable enoughto make other weapons seem superfluous. 

The third pair, however, were equally formidable, and set far back atthe very base of the skull, like those of an antelope. The eyes, ashas been already stated, were small, deep-set and vindictive. Thesullen black of his coloring added to the portentousness of his swiftappearance around the clump of pea-green bamboo. 

For several minutes the two monsters stood eyeing each other, whilethe rage of an instinctive hatred mounted slowly in their sluggishbrains. To the King Dinosaur, this stranger was a trespasser on hisdomain, where no other creatures, unless of his own kind, had everbefore had the presumption to confront him. The suddenness of theblack apparition, also, exasperated him; and he loathed at once thesickly sour smell, so unlike the pungent muskiness of his own kindred, which now for the first time met his sensitive nostrils. 

The Dinoceras, on his part, was in a chronic state of rage. He was asolitary old bull, driven out, for his bad temper, from thecomfortable herd of his fellows, and burning to find vent for hisbottled spleen. The herd, in one of its migrations, had just arrivedin the neighborhood of the great lagoons, and he, in his furiousrestlessness, was unconsciously playing the part of vanguard to it. 

He had never, of course, conceived of so terrible an adversary as thissplotched brown and yellow monster before him. But he was in no moodto calculate odds. For all his blind rage, however, he was a craftyfighter, always. Seeing that the challenger made no move, he gavevoice to a huge, squealing grunt, like the noise of a herd of ragingpigs. Then he dug his armed snout into the turf and hurled a shower ofsod into the air. 

In the eyes of the King Dinosaur this was apparently an intolerableinsult. With a roar he came lumbering forward, at a slow, rolling runwhich seemed to jar the earth. Grunting again, and moving at thricehis speed, the black beast rushed to meet him, head down, like acharging bison. 

They met under the spreading branches of an immense hoya-tree. Butthey did not meet fairly, head to head, as the Dinosaur intended. Hadthey done so the battle would have been decided then and there, forthe black beast's horns and unprotected front were no match for theimpenetrable armor and leveled lances of the King's colossal head. Butthey did not meet fairly. The black stranger was much too crafty forthat. At the last moment he swerved nimbly aside, wheeled with anagility that was marvelous for a creature of his bulk, and thrust atthe shoulders of the colossus with a fierce, rooting movement like thestroke of the wild boar. 

But he struck the rim of that impenetrable defense, the spreading ruffof horn. And he might as well have struck a mountain-side. Thatenormous bulk, firm-based on the wide-set columns which formed itslegs, merely staggered an instant, coughed from the jarring of theblow, and swung about to present his terrific horns against anothersuch attack. The black stranger, meanwhile, as if disappointed at themeager result of his tactics, had drawn back out of reach. He stoodrooting the turf and squealing defiance, in the hope of luring thegiant into a second charge. 

The stupendous duel had two interested spectators. On the top of thenext tree sat an extraordinary-looking bird, about the size of apheasant, colored blue and rose like a macaw. Its tail was like alizard's, long and fully-vertebrated, with a pair of flat feathersstanding out opposite each other at right angles from each joint, forall the world like an immense acacia-frond done in red. At the tips ofits wing-elbows it carried clutching, hand-like claws, resemblingthose of the flying reptiles; and its straight, strong beak was armedwith pointed teeth. It kept opening and shutting its beak excitedlyand uttering sharp cries, as if calling everyone to come and see thefight. 

The other spectator was not excited at all. He was a large, ape-likeman--one would have said, rather, a manlike ape, had it not been forthe look in his eyes. 

This enigmatic figure sat on a branch immediately over the combatants, and held on with one powerful, hairy hand to the branch just abovehim. He was covered with thick, brown hair, like fur, from head tofoot, but that on his head was true hair, long and waving. Hisshoulders were massive, his chest of great depth, his arms so longthat if he had been standing erect they would have hung to his knees, his legs short, massive and much bowed. His hands were furred to thesecond joint of the fingers, but they were the hands of a man, notthose of an ape, for the huge thumb was opposed to the fingers insteadof being set parallel with them like another finger. His head was lowin the arch of the skull, low and narrow in the forehead, with a smallfacial angle and hardly any bridge to the broad, flat, wide-nostrilednose; and the jaws were heavy and thrust forward brutishly. But theeyes, under the roof of the heavy, bony brows, held an expressionprofoundly unlike the cold, mechanical stare of the giant Dinosaur orthe twinkling, vindictive glare of the black stranger. They gazed downat the battle with a sort of superiority, considerate, a littlescornful, in spite of the obvious fact that either of the two, as faras mere physical bulk and prowess were concerned, could haveobliterated him by simply setting foot upon him. In his free hand hegrasped a branch of acacia set with immense thorns, the needle-likepoints of which he touched contemplatively from time to time, as ifpondering what use he could put them to. He had no marked prejudice, for the moment, in favor of either side in the battle below him. Bothmonsters were his foes, and the ideal result, in his eyes, would havebeen for the two to destroy each other. But if he had any preference, it was for the black mammalian beast, the lizard monster appearing tohim the more alien, the more incomprehensible and the more impregnableto any strategy that he might devise. 

For perhaps a couple of minutes, now, the King kept his place, wheeling ponderously to face his agile opponent, who circled about himat a distance of ten to twelve yards, seeking an opportunity to get ina rush upon his open flank. This wheeling and circling made the coolwatcher in the tree impatient. Wrenching off a heavy branch, he hurledit down with all his force upon the King's face. To the King thisseemed but another insult from his black antagonist, and his rageexploded once more. With a roar he wallowed forward, thinking to pinthe elusive foe to earth and tread the life out of him. 

This gave the black beast his opportunity. Doubling nimbly like a wildboar, he dashed in and caught his colossal opponent fairly on theside, midway between the shoulder and the haunch. The impact shockedthe breath from the monster's lungs, with a huge, explosive cough, andbrought him to a bewildered standstill, though it could not throw himfrom his feet. But the armored hide proved too tough for the blackbeast's horns to penetrate. Perceiving this on the instant, the latterreared, and brought down the two awful daggers of his tusks upon themonster's ribs. They penetrated, but they failed to rip as far and asconclusively as their owner intended. And while he struggled to freehimself for another attack, the monster recovered from his daze. 

Now the stranger had taken count only of those weapons which the KingDinosaur bore on his terrible front; and these for the moment were outof reach. But he had forgotten the massive and tremendous tail. Suddenly it lashed out, nearly half a ton in weight, and with theforce of a pile-driver. It struck the black beast on the legs, andswept them clean from under him. 

Before he could pick himself up the Dinosaur had swung about andburied all three horns, to the sockets, in his throat and chest. Hislife went out in one ear-splitting squeal of rage and anguish. The redblood streaming from horns and ruff, the monster wrenched himselffree, and then moved irresistibly over his victim, like a rollingmountain. 

When satisfied that his triumph was complete, the King drew back apace or two, and examined the mangled heap with his cold, unchangingstare. Then he sniffed at it contemptuously, and prodded it with hisnose-horn, and tore it with his extravagant parrot-beak. But, being afeeder on herbage only, he had not thought of tasting the red flesh. The smell of it was abominable to him; and presently he moved closerunder the trees to wipe his beak, as a bird might, on a clump ofcoarse grasses. 

As he did so, the lowering of his head threw his horny ruff farforward, exposing the folds of naked hide on the back of his neck. Thesilent man-creature on the branch above was quick to note theopportunity. He was displeased at the monster's triumph. He was alsointerested to see if he had any power to hurt so colossal and wellprotected a foe. Swinging down by his legs and one hand, he thrust thethorned branch of acacia deep in under the ruff. The monster, jerkinghis head up sharply at this unexpected assault, drove the long thornswell home. 

In an instant he was beside himself with rage and pain. Roaring tillthe blue-and-crimson bird on the tree-top flew off in a panic, heshook his head desperately, and then almost tried to stand upon it. Hestarted to roll over on his back, hoping thus to dislodge the gallingthing beneath the carapace, but thought better of it at the firstadded pressure. His contortions were so vehement that the mandiscreetly drew himself up to a higher branch, a slow grin wideninghis heavy mouth, as he marked his power to inflict injury on even suchan adversary as the King Dinosaur. The experiment had been successfulbeyond his utmost anticipations. Like Nature herself, he wascontinually experimenting, but by no means always with satisfactoryresults. 

Suddenly the monster made off, with head held as low as possible, forthe edge of the lagoon. Ploughing his way in with a huge splashing, hedisappeared beneath the water. A minute later he returned to thesurface and swam rapidly towards the jungle on the opposite shore, probably intending to find some projecting stump of a dead limb onwhich he could scratch the torment from under his ruff. At the edge ofthe jungle he was joined by another monster, like himself, butsmaller--probably one of his mates--and together they disappeared, with heavy crashings, in the rank tangle of the swamp-growths. 

The man-creature descended from his refuge, carrying in one hand aheavy fragment of branch, which he held awkwardly, as if notover-familiar with the idea of an artificial weapon. He seemed to begroping his way towards some use of it, either as a club or as astabbing instrument. During the fight, while he was experimenting withthe thorn branch, he had evidently had this weapon lodged in some safecrotch. And now he kept handling it with a curious interest. 

Standing erect, he might easily have been mistaken for a slightlybuilt and shapelier variety of the gorilla but for the true man-handsand the steady, contemplative, foreseeing look in the eyes. He cameand examined the mangled bulk of the Dinoceras, scrutinized the hornsand tusks minutely, and strove with all his force to wrench one of thelatter from its socket, as if hoping to make some use of it. Then, fastidiously selecting a shred of the victim's torn flesh, he sniffedand nibbled at it, and then threw it aside. He could eat and enjoyflesh-food at a pinch. But just now fruit was abundant; and fruit, with eggs and honey, formed the diet he preferred. As he stoodpondering the lifeless mass before him, a shrill call came to hisears, and, turning sharply, he saw his mate, with her baby in thecrook of her hairy arm, standing at the foot of a tree, and signalinghim to come to her. As soon as she saw that he understood, and wascoming, she swung herself lightly up into the branches. He ran to thetree, climbed after her, and followed her to the very top, where sheawaited him. The tree was taller than any of its neighbors, andcommanded a clear view of the meadow-lands that lay a half mile backfrom the lagoon. His mate was pointing eagerly to these meadows. Hesaw that they were dotted and spotted with groups of great black, horned and tusked beasts like the one whose destruction he had justwitnessed. These were the migrant herds of the Dinoceras, just arrivedat their new pasturage. The man eyed them with discontent. He had seena specimen of their temper; and he congratulated himself that he andhis mate knew how to live in trees. 

The man-creature himself was a new-comer to the shores of the greatlagoon. The place suited him admirably by reason of the abundance ofits fruits. Along the banks of the lagoon were innumerable littlegroves of plantain, the rich sustaining fruit of which was of allfoods his favorite. And he had found no trace whatever of his mostdangerous enemies, the gigantic and implacable black lion of thecaves, the red bear and the saber-tooth. 

Such an irresistible giant as the King of the Triple Horn he mightwonder at, and hate, but he thought he had little cause to fear him. It is easy enough, if one is prudent, to avoid a mountain. 

Having found the place good, and resolved to stay, the man had built arefuge for himself and his family in this tall watch-tower of a tree. With interwoven branches he had made a rude but substantial platform, and carpeted it to something like softness with smaller branches andtwigs. A similar but lighter platform overhead made him a roof thatwas anything but waterproof, and a few bushy branches served forwalls. Such as it was, it was at least the beginning of a home. Heloved it; and in defense of the little hairy brown mate and downybrown baby who shared it with him he would have fought both Dinosaurand Dinoceras with his naked hands. 

For some days nothing more was seen of the two Dinosaurs, the Kingbeing probably occupied, in the depths of the jungle, with the nursingof his wrath and his hurts. The herds of the Dinoceras, meanwhile, kept to their meadows, having better drinking-water in a slow streamwhich traversed the pastures than in the brackish tide of the lagoon. 

Then came a morning when the brown mother, babe on arm, was gatheringplantains not far from the waterside, while the man chanced to be awayexploring the limits of his new domain. The woman looked up suddenly;and there, almost upon her, was the giant horror of the Dinosaur, hiscold, expressionless eyes gaping at her immovably from their gogglingsockets. She turned to flee; and there was the monster's mate, notquite so huge, but equally appalling. Behind her was an impenetrablewall of thorn-acacia. There was only one refuge--a tree, all toosmall, but lofty enough to take her beyond the reach of thosehorrifying horned and immobile masks. Up the little tree she went, nimbly as a monkey, and crouched shivering in a crotch. The slendertrunk swayed beneath her weight. She clutched the brown baby to herheart, and sent shriek after shriek through the glades. 

A mile away the man heard it. He gave one deep-chested shout inanswer, and then came running in silence, saving his breath. 

But it was a mile he had to come. The female Dinosaur, the moreinstantly malignant of the two, hurled herself upon the trunk of thetree. It swayed horribly, but did not yield at once. Thereupon the twobegan to root beneath it with their horns, having often used thismethod to obtain fruits which were above their reach. The tree leanedfar over. The giant straddled it as a moose straddles a poplarsapling, and bore it down irresistibly. Its top touched earth. 

The brown mother sprang forth with a tremendous leap, clearing thehorns with a twist which nearly broke her back. She thought herselffree. And then a gigantic tail struck her and felled her senseless. Asecond more, and the female Dinosaur's great foot crushed her and thewailing babe out of existence together. 

The swift end of the tragedy the man had seen as he came racing down astretch of open glade. He did not need to look at the awful thingbeneath the monster's foot to know that all was over. Beyond onehoarse groan he uttered not a sound. But blindly--for he had never yetpractised such an art--he hurled his ragged club at the nearestmonster. It rebounded like a baby's rattle from the vast horn-armoredhead. But a lucky chance had guided it. One of its sharp, splinteredknots struck fairly in the Dinosaur's eye, and smashed it in thesocket. She roared with agony; and the two, side by side, came lungingtowards him. 

The man ran back slowly. His despairing grief had changed suddenlyinto a cold hate and a resolve for vengeance. It was so easy for himto outstrip these lumbering monsters who were spouting their fetid, musky breath close upon his heels. He stumbled carefully at everyother step. He let them feel that at the next stride they wouldtransfix him. He led them on, the earth shaking beneath their tread, till another fifty feet would have brought them out upon the skirts ofthe meadow. But at this point, wearied by such an unwonted burst ofeffort, the King halted sulkily. He had not had an eye put out. Hewanted to give it up. But his mate came right on, thirsting for herrevenge. 

The man was not content with her pursuit alone. Spurting ahead, hegathered up two handfuls of sand and gravel, whirled about, and drovethem with all his strength into the King's cold eyes. It worked. Smarting and half blinded, the monster forgot his weariness, and camecharging along furiously in the trail of his mate. 

They were stupid, these Lizard Kings, with more brains in their pelvicarches than in their giant skulls. Because the puny man-creature wentstumbling almost within reach of their beaks, they imagined they weregoing to catch him. That he would go dodging around thickets whichthey crashed over blindly, and would then return to present himselfagain deliberately before them, did not strike them as at allsuspicious. Their dull but relentless hate once thoroughly aroused, aslong as he was in sight and they could move the mighty columns oftheir legs, they would pursue him. 

Through the last heavy fringe of bush and leafage they pursued him, and with a great crashing of branches came out upon the open, short-grass meadow. Still the man-creature stumbled on, straight outinto the open, and still they followed, raging silently. 

The black herds of the Dinoceras stopped feeding all at once, andraised their vicious heads and stared. 

There were countless cows in the herd, horned like the bulls, butsmaller, and without the rending tusks. The cows, at this season, allhad young. After one long, comprehending stare at the two giganticmottled shapes bearing down upon them, the herd put itself in motion. The man-creature they hardly noticed, he seemed so insignificant. 

With eyes that took in everything, coolly and sagaciously, the manobserved that the motion of the herd was an ordered one. The blackbeasts were deftly sorting themselves out to meet the danger. Thebulls came thrusting themselves to the front--a terrific array whichmight have struck panic to the hearts of even the colossal Dinosaurshad they not been too stupid with rage for any new impression topierce their brains. The cows, meanwhile, pushing their calves into ahuddled mass behind them, formed themselves into a second array, areserve of less mass and strength than the ranks of the bulls, but ofan invincible mother-fury. 

The man, with a wise fearlessness, ran on straight through thegathering line of bulls, the nearest of whom thrust at him carelesslyand then paid him no more heed. Behind their ranks, hidden now fromthe sight of his pursuers, he swerved, avoiding the line of cows, ransharply to the right, and came back around the end of the line to seewhat was going to happen. For all his grief, his heart was thumpingalmost to suffocation as his titanic vengeance moved to its end. 

When the two raging Dinosaurs lost sight of their prey they stoppedshort, stupidly bewildered. Then they noticed the array of blackbeasts charging upon them. This, in their mad mood, afforded a newobject to their rage. They plunged wallowing forward to meet the newfoe. And at that moment the man, appearing round the wing of the blackranks, halted abruptly, and laughed. 

It was a strange, disconcerting sound, that laughter, and the nearestDinoceras, disturbed by it, edged away and crowded against hisneighbor's flank in an inexplicable apprehension. 

The next moment the stupendous opposing forces met with a shock that, to the man's overstrung senses, seemed to make the very daylight reel. There was no space for evasion or manoeuver. The two ponderous bulkswent straight through the ranks of the black bulls, ripping them withbeak and horn from shoulder to rump, treading them down like corn, andtrampling them under foot as they rolled on. The bulls on either sidecharged on their flanks, rearing, grunting, squealing insanely andripping with the massive daggers of their tusks. But as this terrificassault came from both sides at once, the two monsters were in realitysupported by it, so that they were not swept off their feet. Almostwithout a check, as it seemed, they ploughed straight on, lashing withtheir mighty tails, and leaving a trail of disabled victims behindthem, and so wore their way right up to the line of the cows. 

But here they were stopped. The calves were behind that line. 

The black mothers simply heaped themselves upon those impaling hornsand armored fronts, bearing them down, smothering, engulfing them inan avalanche of screaming and monstrous bulks. The bulls, meanwhile, were rending, tearing, stabbing, on flank and rear. The two Dinosaursdisappeared from view. The dreadful mountain of writhing, giganticshapes heaved convulsively for some minutes. Then the great columnsthat were the Dinosaurs' legs seemed to crumble beneath the weight. The awful, battling heap sagged, fell apart, and let in the glare ofthe sunlight upon what had been the two colossal monarchs of the earlyworld. The dreadful, unrecognizable things still moved, still heavedand twisted ponderously among the bodies of their slain, but it wasmere aimless paroxysm, the blind life struggling to resist its finalexpulsion and dissipation. The wounded Dinoceras drew away, to die orrecover as curious Nature might decree. The surviving cows returned toassure themselves that their young had come to no hurt. And the greatblack bulls who had escaped serious injury in the struggle stood aboutin a ring, thrusting and ripping at the unresponsive mountains offlesh. As they satisfied themselves, one after another, that thevictory was complete, and that there was nothing more to battleagainst, they fell to devouring their prey. Ordinarily feeders onherbage and roots, they were like pigs and rats and men, more or lesswithout prejudice in their diet, and they seemed to think thatdinosaur went very well with grass. 

At a distance of not more than fifty paces from these destroyinghosts, the man-creature stood carelessly, and stared and considered. He had no fear of them. He knew he could avoid them with ease. Soinsignificant that in their excitement they hardly noticed him, sosmall that in bulk he was no greater than the least of their calves, he nevertheless despised the gigantic beasts and felt himself theirlord. He had played with the two monarchs of all the early world, ledthem into his trap, and taken such dreadful vengeance upon them thathis grief was almost assuaged by the fullness of it. The black herdsof the Dinoceras he had used as the tools of his vengeance. No doubt, if necessary, he could use them again in some such fashion. 

He turned his back upon them, knowing that his fine ear would informhim at once if any should take it into their heads to pursue him, andstalked away with deliberation towards the wooded ground. But heavoided his tree. He would never more go near that empty home. Hewould return to the regions beyond the head of the lagoon, where hewould find scattered members of his kindred. He would find anothermate; and in a dim, groping way he harbored a desire for newoffspring, for sons, in particular, who should be inquiring and fullof resource, like himself. At the edge of the wood he turned, and gaveone more long, musing look at the invincible black herds whom he hadused. The idea of sons came back upon him insistently. A faint senseof the immeasurable vastness of what was to be done swept over hissoul. But he was not daunted. He would at least do something. And hewould teach his children, till they should learn, perhaps, by takingthought, even to overcome the ferocity of the saber-tooth and foil themalice of the great red bear. 

CHAPTER III

THE FINDING OF FIRE

I

The people of the Little Hills were in extremity. Trouble aftertrouble had come upon them, blow after blow had stricken them, tillnow there were but three score fighting-men, with perhaps twice thatnumber of women able to bear children, left to the tribe. It looked asif but one more stroke such as that which had just befallen them mustwipe them out of existence. And that, had ruthless Nature suffered it, would have been a damage she might have taken some thousands of yearsto repair. For the People of the Little Hills had climbed higher fromthe pregnant ooze than any other of the man or half-man tribes at thattime struggling into being on the youthful Earth. 

First and not least formidable to the tribe had been an incursion fromthe east of beings who were plainly men, in a way, but still moreplainly beasts. Had the tribe of the Little Hills but known it, theseApe-men were much like their own ancestors except for the blackness oftheir skins beneath the coarse fur, the narrow angle of their skullsand the heavy forward thrust of their lower jaws. 

Soon afterwards, appearing from no man could say just where, camea scattered incursion of mammoth cave-bears, saber-toothed tigers anda few gigantic cave-lions. These ravenous monsters not onlyslaughtered wholesale the game on which the Hillmen most depended, but strove--each for himself, fortunately--to seize the caves. Asthey raged against each other no less desperately than againsttheir human adversaries, the issue of the war was never in doubt. The Hillmen stood together solidly, fought with all their cunningof pitfall and ambuscade, and overwhelmed the mightiest by sheerweight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When thelast of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek lessdifficult encounters, he left mourning and lamentation in the caves. 

This war had been a matter of some seasons. Then had followed a summerof peace and good hunting, which had given wounds time to heal. Butwith winter had swept down another dreadful invasion again from theunfriendly east--wolves, wolves of gigantic stature, and hunting insuch huge packs that many outlying sections of the tribe were cut offand devoured before the Hillmen could combine to withstand them. Fortunately, the different packs had no combined action, so after thefirst shock the sagacious warrior who ruled the men of the LittleHills was able to get his diminished followers together, along withmost of their stored supplies, and mass them in the amphitheater ofthe central caves. 

So dragged by half the desperate winter. Then suddenly the wolves, having exterminated or driven off all the game among the Little Hills, once more took the trail, though with diminished ranks, and swept offravaging to the south-westward. The People of the Little Hills werefree once more to come out into the sun. But there was no more game tohunt, neither in the forest, nor on the upland slopes, nor in thereeking marshes by the estuary. The tribe was driven to fumbling inthe pools at low tide for scallops and clams and mussels, a diet whichtheir souls despised and their bodies resented. 

The fact that the invasion of the wolves had forced the tribe toconcentrate, however, presently proved to have been a painfullydisguised blessing. Had they remained as before, scattered all overtheir domain for the convenience of the chase, their next and hardesttrial would surely have annihilated them. 

It was once more out of the east that it came upon them, by the trailof the vanished Ape-men and the ravaging wolves. About sunrise of asummer's day a woman of the tribe was grubbing for roots with apointed stick by the banks of a brook when she was pounced upon by apair of squat, yellow-brown, filthy men with enormous shoulders, shortbow-legs and flat faces with gaping, upturned nostrils. Young andvigorous, she fought like a tigress till stunned by a blow on thehead, which was not before both her assailants were streaming withblood from the jabs of her sharp digging-stick. Her cries had arousedthe tribe, however, and her captors, appreciating in her a shapelinessand fairness beyond anything they had ever seen in their own females, hastened to make sure of their prize by dragging her off into thewoods. Three of the Hillmen, raging in pursuit, were intercepted by ahorde of the squat strangers suddenly leaping from the thickets, surrounded, pulled down after a heaving convulsion of struggle, tornto pieces and trodden into the earth. 

The Chief of the tribe, from his vantage at the top of the slope whichled up to the little amphitheater of caves wherein he had gathered hispeople, saw and understood. The perils of the past two years had madehim cool and provident. One look at those foul and shaggy hordes, leaping like beasts, had told him that this was to be a battle to thedeath. Angrily beating back the hotheads who would have rushed down toavenge their kin and inevitably to share their fate, his shouts, bellowed sonorously from his deep and hairy chest, called up the wholetribe to the defense of the bottle-neck pass which led into theamphitheater. At a word, passed on breathlessly from mouth to mouth, the old men and the old women, with some of the bigger children, swarmed up among the rocks and ledges which formed the two walls ofthe pass, while others raced about collecting stones to hand up tothem. The younger women and grown girls, armed, like the men, withstone-headed clubs and flint-tipped spears, took their places in thehinder ranks at the mouth of the pass. 

The Bow-legs, their yellow skin showing through the clotted tufts ofcoarse, clay-colored hair which unevenly clothed their bodies, cameplunging irregularly through the brook and gathered in confused massesalong the foot of the slope, jabbering shrilly to each other andmaking insolent gestures toward the silent company at the top. Thehair of their heads was stringy, coarse and scant, and of an inkyblackness, in contrast to the abundant locks of the Hillmen, whichwere for the most part of a dark brown or ruddy hue. 

In other respects the contrast was still more striking, the Hillmen, erect and straight, were taller than their bestial-looking opponentsby a foot or fifteen inches. With less breadth of shoulder andheaviness of trunk, they had great depth of chest, great musculardevelopment in arm and leg, and a leanness of flank that gave them alook of breed. Their skins, very hairy in the case of the mature men, were of a reddish-tan color, paling to pink and cream in the childrenand younger women. They had ample foreheads under the wild thatch oftheir hair, and high, well-bridged noses, and fierce, steady eyes ofgreen, blue or brown-gray. Outnumbered nearly ten to one, and shrewdenough to see at a glance what ferocious power lurked in thosemisshapen frames at the foot of the slope, they stood staring downupon them in silence, with an undaunted loathing. 

For some minutes the hordes of the Bow-legs clustered together, jabbering and waving their crude but massive clubs excitedly. Theyseemed to have no chief, no plan of attack, no discipline of any sort. Some of them even squatted down on the turf and scratched themselveslike monkeys, glaring malignantly but stupidly at the little array oftheir opponents, and snorting through their hideous upturned nostrils, which were little more than wide, red pits in their faces. Then someof those who were squatting on the ground began to play with adreadful red ball which had some wisps of hair yet clinging to it. 

A snarling roar went up from the ranks of the Hillmen, and some ofthem would have rushed to accept the ghastly challenge. But theChief held them back sternly. Then he himself, half a head tallerthan all but one or two of his followers, with magnificent chest andshoulders, and a dark, lionlike mane thick-streaked with grey, strode out three or four paces to the front and stood leaning on hishuge, porphyry-headed club while he glared down contemptuously overthe gesticulating horde. 

The Bow-legs stilled their jabbering for a moment to stare withinterest at this imposing figure. Then one of those who were seated onthe ground seized the ghastly ball that they were playing with, whirled it by the hair and hurled it two-thirds of the way up theslope. As it fell and rebounded, two young women sprang from theranks, their thick locks streaming like a cloud behind them, anddashed down the hill to meet it. The foremost caught it up, clutchedit to her naked breast, and screamed a curse upon the gapingmurderers. Then the two fled back, and were lost in the ranks of theHillmen. 

The sight of the two women, with their bright skins, their strong, straight limbs and their rich, floating hair, appeared to give theBow-legs just the spur to concerted action that they were needing. They rightly judged there were more of those desirable beings in thecrowd behind that tall, contemptuous chief. Those on the groundscrambled eagerly to their feet, and with shrill, bestial yells thewhole horde charged up the slope. 

As the leaping and hideous forms approached the top the pent-up furyof the Hillmen, in spite of all the Chief could do, broke loose, andwith a roar the foremost ranks bounded forth to meet them. At thefirst crash of contact the enemy were crushed back, the stone-headedclubs and flint-tipped spears working havoc in the reeking masses. But, as the Chief had foreseen it would be, that forward rush was amistake, exposing the flanks; and sheer weight of numbers presentlyforced the Hillmen back till their front was once more level with thejaws of the pass. Here, however, with their flanks protected, theywere solid as a wall of granite. 

Upon this narrow wall the yelling wave of the attack surged andrecoiled, and surged again, and made no impression. The clumsy weaponsof the enemy were no match for the pounding swing of the stone clubs, the long, lightning thrust of the flint-headed spears. But theBow-legs, their little pig-eyes red with lust for their prey, foughtwith a sort of frenzy, diving in headlong and clutching at the legs ofthe Hillmen with their ape-like, sinewy arms, dragging them down andtearing then with crooked, clawlike fingers. 

Many of the Hillmen, and some women died in this way. But no woman wasdragged away alive; for if this fate threatened her, and rescue wasimpossible, she was instantly speared from her own ranks to save herfrom a fate which would have dishonored the tribe. And the womenindeed, in this battle were no less formidable than the menthemselves, for they fought with the swift venom of the she-wolf, thecunning fury of the mad heifer, intuitive and implacable. Theirinstincts of motherhood, the safeguard of the future, made them loathewith a blind, unspeakable hate these filthy and bestial males whothreatened to father their children. 

The center of the Hillmen's front was securely held by the greatChief, whose massive club, wielded with the art acquired in manybattles, kept a space cleared before him across which no foe couldpass alive. As his followers went down on either side, others from theranks behind stepped eagerly into the gaps. At the extreme left, wherethe walls of the pass, lower and less abrupt than on the right, invited an attack as fierce as that upon the center, the defense wasled by a warrior named Grôm, who seemed no less redoubtable than theChief himself. He, too, like the Chief, fought in grim silence, savinghis breath, except for an occasional incisive cry of command orencouragement to those about him. And his club also, like that of theChief, kept a zone of death before him. 

But his club was much smaller than that shattering mace of porphyrywielded by the Chief--smaller and lighter, considerably longer in thehandle and quite of another pattern. The head was of flint, a sort ofragged cone set sideways into the handle, so that one end of the headwas like a sledge-hammer and the other like a pick. Grasping this neatweapon nearly half-way up the handle, he made miraculous play with it, now smashing with the hammer front, now tapping with the pick, nowsuddenly swinging it out to the full length of the long handle toreach and drop an elusive adversary. The weapon was both club andspear to him; and to guard against any possibility of its beingwrenched from him in the mêlée, he held it secured to his wrist by athong of hide. 

This warrior, though his renown in the tribe, both as hunter andfighter, was second only to that of the great Chief himself, had neveraroused the Chief's jealousy. This for several reasons. He had alwaysloyally supported the Chief's authority, instead of scheming toundermine it, and his influence had always made for tribal discipline. He was not so tall as the Chief, by perhaps half a handbreadth, andfor all his huge muscles of arm and breast he was altogether of aslimmer build; wherefore the Chief, while vastly respecting hiscounsels, was not suspicious of his rivalry. Moreover, up to the timeof the invasion of the wolves, he had always dwelt in a remote cave, quite on the outskirts of the tribe, constituting himself a frontierdefense, as it were, and avoiding all the tribal gossip. Slightlyyounger than the Chief, and with few gray streaks as yet in the dense, ruddy-brown masses of his hair and beard, his face nevertheless lookedolder, by reason of its deeper lines and the considering gravity ofthe eyes. 

In his remote cave Grôm had had the companionship of his family, consisting of his old mother, his two wives, and his four children--threesons and a daughter. It was while he was absent on a hunting expeditionthat the wolves had come. They had surprised the little, isolatedfamily, and after a terrible struggle wiped it out. 

Conspicuous among the fighters at Grôm's back was a young girl, tall, with a fair skin and masses of long, very dark hair. Armed with aspear, she fought savagely, but at the same time managed to keep aneye on all the warrior's movements. 

Suddenly from the rocks above came a shrill cry. To Grôm's ears itseemed like the voice of one of his dead children. At the end of along stroke, when his arms and the club were outstretched full length, he glanced upwards in spite of himself. Instantly the club wasclutched by furious hands. He was pulled forward. At the same time oneof the enemy, ducking under his arms, plunged between his legs. And hecame down upon his face. 

With a piercing scream, the tall girl bounded forth and stood acrosshim; and her spear stabbed his nearest assailant straight through theflat and grinning face. So lightning swift was the rage of her attackthat for one vital moment it held the whole horde at bay. Then theHillmen swarmed forward irresistibly, battered down the foremost ofthe foe, and dragged the fallen warrior back behind the lines torecover. In half a minute he was once more at the front, fighting withrenewed fury, his head and back and shoulders covered with blood. Andclose behind him stood the girl, breathless, clutching at her heartand staring at him with wide eyes, unaware that the blood whichcovered him was not his but her own. 

Although to the invaders, their every charge broken and hurled backwith terrific slaughter, it must have seemed that their tall opponentshad all the best of the battle, to the wise old men and women up amongthe rocks it was clear that their warriors were being rapidly wornaway as a bank is eaten by the waves. But now from a high ledge on theright, where the wall of the pass was a sheer perpendicular, came twoshrill whistles. It was a signal which the Chief, now bleeding frommany wounds, had been waiting for. He roared a command, and his ranks, after one surge forward to recover their wounded, gave back sullenlytill their front was more than half-way down the pass. With yells oftriumph the Bow-legs followed, trampling their dead and wounded, tillthe bottle-neck was packed so tightly that there was no room to move. 

From the left wall a ceaseless shower of stones came down upon theirheads; but from the right, for a few moments, only a rain of pebblesand dust, which blinded them and choked their hideous, upturnednostrils. 

Above that dust a band of graybeards heaved upon a lever. They gruntedand strained, with eyes staring and the sweat jumping forth on theirforeheads. Then something gave. A great slice of the rock-face beganto slip. Some of the toilers scrambled back to safety, their long, white hair flying behind them. But others, unable to recoverthemselves in time, fell sprawling forward. Then with a thunderousgrowl a huge slab of rock and earth and débris crashed down upon thepacked hordes in the neck of the pass. A long shout of triumph went upfrom the Hillmen. The outer ranks of the invaders stood for a secondor two petrified with horror. Then they turned and fled, screaming, down the slope. On their heels the Hillmen pursued, slaughtering, tillthe brook-bed was choked with the dead. Of that filthy horde hardly ascore escaped, and these fled back, gibbering, to meet the migranthosts of their kin who were following on their trail. The story theytold was of a tribe of tall, fair-skinned demons, invincible in war, who tore up mountains to hurl them on their adversaries. Andthereafter, for a time, the Bow-legged hosts changed the path of theirmigration, sweeping far to the southward to avoid the land of theLittle Hills. 

II

A white, high-sailing moon streamed down into the amphitheater, wherethe scarred remnant of the tribe of the Little Hills, squatting beforetheir cave-mouths, took counsel. Their dead had all been reverentlyburied, under heaps of stones, on the bare and wind-swept shoulder ofthe downs. Outside the pass the giant jackals, cave-hyenas and otherscavengers of the night, howled and scuffled over the carcasses of theslain invaders. 

Endless and tumultuous was the talk, the white-haired, bent old menand the women who had borne children being listened to as attentivelyas the warriors. The Chief, sitting on a rock which raised him abovethe rest, spoke only a word now and then, but gave ear to all, glancing from speaker to speaker with narrowed eyes, weighing allsuggestions. On the outskirts of the circle stood Grôm, leaning on hisclub, staring at the moon, apparently lost in dreams. 

Suddenly the Chief uttered a sharp word, and the tribe fell silent. Herose, yet stiff from his wounds, and, towering masterfully over thecouncil announced his decision. 

"I have heard much foolishness, " said he, "but also some wisdom. Andthe greatest wisdom has come from the lips of my father yonder, Alpthe old. " He pointed to a decrepit figure, whose bowed head was hiddenunder a mass of white hair. "My father's eyes are blind with age, " hecontinued, "but behind their darkness they see many things that wecannot see. They have seen that all these disasters which have latelycome upon us have come out of the east. They see that there must be areason. They see that other terrible dangers must also be coming outof the east, and that we People of the Little Hills lie in their path. How many more can we withstand, and live? Not one more. Therefore, Isay we will leave this place, this home of our fathers, and we will gotoward the setting sun, and find a new home far from our enemies tillwe can grow strong again. I have said it. "

As he sat down there was a low murmur, many thinking he was right;while others, not daring to dissent quite openly, yet were angry andafraid at the idea of leaving their familiar dwellings. But Grôm, whohad turned on his club and listened to the Chief with shining eyes, now stepped forward into the circle and spoke. 

"Bawr is our Chief, " said he, in a clear, calm voice; "not onlybecause he is our mightiest in war, but because he is also our wisestin counsel. When do we go?"

The Chief thought for a moment. For the murmurs of the dissidents hecared nothing, having made up his mind. But he was glad of Grôm'ssupport. 

"Two moons hence, " he answered presently. "Our wounded must be healed, for we must be strong on the journey. And as we go far, and know notwhere we go, we must gather much food to carry with us. When the moonis twice again full, we leave these caves and the Land of the LittleHills. "

"Then, " said Grôm, "if Bawr will allow me, I will go and find a placefor us, and come again quickly and lead the tribe thither by theshortest way. "

"It is good!" said Bawr, quick to see what dangerous wanderings mightbe spared to the tribe by this plan. "When will you go?"

"In to-morrow's morning-red, " answered Grôm. 

At Grôm's words, the young girl, A-ya, who had been watching thewarrior where he stood aloof, sprang to her feet in sharp agitationand clutched her dark hair to her bosom in two great handfuls. At thisa huge youth, who had been squatting as close as possible to the girl, and eyeing her averted face greedily, jumped up with a jealous scowl. 

"Grôm is a traitor!" he cried. "He deserts us in our need. Let him notgo, Chief!"

A growl of protest went up from his hearers. The girl faced round uponhim with blazing eyes. Grôm gave him an indifferent glance, and turnedaway, half smiling. The Chief struck the rock with his club, and saidcoldly:

"Mawg is young, and his words are foolish. Grôm is a true man. Heshall do as he will. "

The youth's heavy features worked angrily for a moment as he soughtwords for a further attack. Then his face smoothed into a grin as heremembered that from so perilous a venture it was most unlikely hisrival would ever return. He gave a crafty side-glance at the girl, andsat down again, while she turned her back upon him. At a sign from theChief the council broke up, and all slipped off, chattering, intotheir caves. 

 * * * * *

As the first pink light crept up the sky, Grôm set forth on hismysterious venture. It was just such a venture as his sanguine andinquiring spirit, avid of the unknown, had always dreamed of. Butnever before had he had such an object before him as seemed to justifythe long risk. There was all a boy's eagerness in his deep eyes, undertheir shaggy brows, as he slipped noiselessly out of the bottle-neck, picked his way lightly over the well-gnawed bones of the slaininvaders, turned his back on the sunrise, and took his course up theedge of the stream. The weapons he carried were his war-club, twolight, flint-headed hunting-spears and a flint knife hung from hiswolf-skin girdle. 

All that day, till mid-afternoon, he journeyed swiftly, straightahead, taking no precaution save to keep always a vigilant watch andto avoid dark coverts whence tiger or leopard might spring upon him. He was in a region which he had often hunted over, and where he feltat home. He traveled very swiftly, at a long, noiseless lope; and whenhe wished to rest he climbed into a tree for security. 

Several times during the day he had had a sensation of being followed;and, turning quickly, he had run back, in the hope of detecting hispursuer. But when he found no one, he concluded that it was merely oneof the ghosts the tribe so feared, but whom he himself rather held incontempt as futile. 

Long before noon he had forsaken the brook, because its course hadceased to lead him westward. In the afternoon he reached a river whichmarked the limit of his former explorations. It was a wide, swiftwater, but too shallow and turbulent for swimming, and he forded itwith some difficulty. Once across, he went with more caution, oppressed with a sense of strangeness, although the landscape as yetwas in no way greatly changed. 

As the sun got low, Grôm cast about for a safe tree in whose top topass the perilous hours of dark. As he stared around him a cry of fearcame from the bunch of woods which he had just quitted. The voice wasa woman's. He ran back. The next second the trees parted, and a girlcame rushing towards him, her dark hair streaming behind her. Closeafter her came three huge cave-wolves. 

Grôm shouted, and hurled a spear. It struck one of the wolves full inthe chest, splitting the heart. At this the other two haltedirresolutely. But as Grôm's tall figure came bounding down upon them, their indecision vanished. They wheeled about, and ran off into thethickets. The girl came forward timorously, and knelt at Grôm's feet. 

At first with wonder and some annoyance, the warrior looked down uponher. Then recognition came into his eyes. He saw the tip of a deepwound on her shoulder, and knew that it ran, livid and angry, half-waydown her bosom. It was the young girl A-ya. His eyes softened, for hehad heard how it was she who had saved him in the battle, fighting sofuriously over him when he was down--she in whose blood he had foundhis shoulders bathed. Yet up to that time he had never noticed her, his mind being full of other matters than women. Now he looked at herand wondered. He was sorely afraid of being hampered in his greatenterprise, but he asked her gently why she had followed him. 

"I was afraid for you, " she answered, without looking up. "You go tosuch great dangers. I could not stay with the tribe, and wait. "

"You think I need help?" he asked, with a self-confident look in hiseyes. 

"You did need me in the battle!" answered the girl proudly. 

"True!" said Grôm. "But for you I should now have been sleeping underthe stones and the wind. "

He looked at her with a feeling that surprised himself, a kind ofthrilling tenderness, such as he had never felt toward a woman before. His wives had been good wives and dutiful, and he had been contentwith them. But it occurred to him that neither of them would ever havethought to come with him on this expedition. 

"I could not stay without you, " said the girl again. "Also, I wasafraid of Mawg, " she added cunningly. 

A wave of jealous wrath surged through Grôm's veins. 

"If Mawg had troubled you, I would have killed him!" said he fiercely. And, snatching the girl to her feet, he crushed her for a momentvehemently to his great breast. 

"But why, " he went on, "did you follow me so secretly all day?"

"I was afraid you would be angry, and send me back, " she answered, with a sigh of content. 

"I could not have sent you back, " said Grôm, his indifference quiteforgotten. "But come, we must find a place for the night. "

And hand in hand they ran to a great tree which Grôm had alreadymarked for his retreat. As they climbed to the upper branches, duskfell quickly about them, some great beast roared thunderously from thedepths of the forest, and from a near-by jungle came sudden crashingsof the undergrowth. 

III

For three weeks Grôm and the girl pressed on eagerly, swinging northto avoid a vast lake, whose rank and marshy shores were trodden bymonsters such as they had never before set eyes upon. Of nights, nomatter how high or how well hidden their tree-top refuge might be, they found it necessary to keep vigil turn and turn about, so numerousand so enterprising were the enemies who sought to investigate thestrange human trail. 

Had Grôm been alone he would soon have been worn out for want ofsleep. The girl, however, her eyes ever bright with happiness, seemedutterly untiring, and Grôm watched her with daily growing delight. Hehad never heard or dreamed of a man regarding a woman as he regardedthe lithe, fierce creature who ran beside him. But he had never beenafraid of new things or new ideas, and he was not ashamed of thissweet ache of tenderness at his astonished heart. 

Beyond the lake and the morasses they came to a strange, brokenland, a land of fertile valleys, deep-verdured and teeming with life, but sown with abrupt, conelike, naked hills. Along the near horizonran a chain of those sharp, low summits, irregularly jagged againstthe pale blue. From several of the summits rose streamers of murkyvapor; and one of these, darker and more abundant than the others, spread abroad at the top on the windless air till it took the shapeof a colossal pine-tree. To the girl the sight was portentous. Itfilled her with apprehension, and she would have liked to avoidthis unfamiliar-looking region. But, seeing that Grôm was filledwith interest at the novel phenomena before them, she thrust asideher fears and assumed a like eagerness on the subject. 

In the heat of the day they came to a pair of trees, lofty andspreading, which stood a little apart from the rest of the forestgrowth, in a stretch of open meadows. An ice-cold rivulet babbled pasttheir roots. It was time for the noonday rest, and these trees seemedto offer a safe retreat. The girl drank, splashed herself with thedelicious coolness, flung back her dripping hair, then swung herselfup lightly into the branches. Grôm lingered a few moments below, letting the water trickle down and over his great muscles by handfuls. Then he threw himself down upon his face and drank deep. 

While he was in this helpless position--his sleepless vigilance forthe moment at fault--from behind a near-by thicket rushed a gigantic, shaggy grey form, and hurled itself at him ponderously but with awfulswiftness, like a grey bowlder dashing down a hillside. The girl, fromher perch in the lower branches, gave a shriek of warning. Grômbounded to his feet, and darted for the tree. But the monster--a graybear, of a bulk beyond that of the hugest grizzly--was almost uponhim, and would have seized him before he could climb out of reach. Aspear hurtled close past his head. It grazed, and laid open, the sideof the beast's snout, and sank deep into its shoulder. With a roar, the beast halted to claw it forth. And in that moment Grôm swunghimself up into the branches, dropping both his spears as he did so. 

The bear, mad with pain and fury, reared himself against the trunk andbegan to draw himself up. Grôm struck at him with his club, but fromhis difficult position could put no force into his blow and the bearhardly seemed to notice it. 

"We must lead him up, then drop down and run, " said Grôm. And the twomounted nimbly. 

The bear followed, till the branches began to yield too perilouslybeneath his weight. Then Grôm and the girl slipped over into the nexttree. As they did so another bear even huger than the first, andapparently her mate, appeared below, glanced up with shrewd, implacable eyes, and proceeded to climb the second tree. 

Grôm looked at the girl with piercing anxiety such as he had neverknown before. 

"Can you run, very fast?" he demanded. 

The girl laughed, her terror almost forgotten in her pride at havingonce more saved him. 

"I ran from the wolves, " she reminded him. 

"Then we must run, perhaps very far, " answered Grôm, reassured, "tillwe find some place of steep rocks where we can fight with some hope. For these beasts are obstinate, and will never give up from pursuingus. And, unlike the red cave-bears they seem to know how to climbtrees. "

When both bears were high in the two trees, Grôm and the girl slippeddown by the bending tips of the branches, almost as swiftly asfalling. They snatched up Grôm's two spears and A-ya's broken one, andran, down along the brook toward the line of the smoking hills. Thebears, descending more slowly, came after them at a terrific, ponderous gallop. 

The girl ran, as she had said, well--so well that Grôm who was famousin the tribe for his running, did not have greatly to slacken his pacein her favor. Finding that, at first, they gained slightly on theirpursuers, Grôm bade her slow down a little till they did no more thanhold their own. Fearing lest she should exhaust herself, he ran alwaysa pace behind her, admonishing her how to save her strength and herbreath, and ever warily casting his eyes about for a possible refuge. Warily, too, he chose the smoothest ways, sparing her feet. For heknew that if she gave out and fell he would stop and fight his lastfight over her body. 

For an hour or more the girl ran easily. Then she began to show signsof distress. Her face grew ashen, the breath came harshly from heropen lips, and once or twice she stumbled. With the first pang of fearat his heart, Grôm closed up beside her, made her lean heavily on hisrigid forearm, and cheered her with words of praise. He pointed to aspur of broken mountains now close ahead, with a narrow valleycleaving them midway. 

"There will be ledges, " he said, "where we can defend ourselves, andwhere you can rest. "

Skirting a bit of jungle, so dense with massive cane and thornedcreepers that nothing could penetrate it, they came suddenly upon aspace of barren gray plain, and saw, straight ahead, the opening ofthe valley. It was not more than a couple of furlongs distant. And itswalls, partly clothed with shrubbery, partly naked, were so seamed andcleft and creviced that they appeared to promise many convenientretreats. But across the mouth of the valley extended an appallingbarrier. From an irregular fissure in the parched earth, running on aslant from one wall to the other, came tongues of red flame, wavingupwards to a height of several feet, sinking back, rising again, andbowing as if in some enchanted dance. 

Grôm's heart stood still in awe and amazement, and for a second hepaused. The girl shut her eyes in unspeakable terror, and her kneesgave way beneath her. As she sank, Grôm's spirit rose to theemergency. The bears were now almost upon them. He jerked the girlviolently to her feet, and spoke to her in a voice that brought herback to herself. Dragging her by the wrist, he ran on straight for thebarrier. The girl, obedient to his order, shrank close to his side andran on bravely, keeping her eyes upon the ground. 

"If they are gods, those bright, dancing things, " said Grôm, with aconfidence he was far from feeling, "they will save us. If they aredevils, I will fight them. "

A little to the right appeared a gap in the leaping barrier, anopening some fifty feet across. Grôm made for the center of thisopening. The fissure here was not more than three feet in width. Therunners took it in their stride. But a fierce heat struck up from it. It filled the girl with such horror that her senses failed herutterly. She ran on blindly a dozen paces more, then reeled and fellin a swoon. Before her body touched the ground, Grôm had swung her upinto his arms, but as he did so he looked back. 

The bears were no longer pursuing. A spear's-throw back they hadstopped, growling and whining, and swaying their mountainous formsfrom side to side in angry irresolution. 

"They fear the bright, dancing things, " said Grôm to himself; andadded, with a throb of exultation, "which I do not fear. "

Noticing for the first time in his excitement that the ground, hereparched and bare, was uncomfortably hot beneath his feet, he carriedhis burden a few rods further on, to where the green began again, andlaid her down on the thick herbage. Then he turned to see what thebears were going to do. 

Seeing that their intended prey made no further effort to flee, thetwo monsters grew still more excited. For a moment Grôm thought theywould dare the passage of the barrier, but he was reassured to seethat the flames filled them with an insuperable fear. They dared notcome nearer than the thin edges of the verdure. At last, as if thesame notion had struck them both at once, they whirled aboutsimultaneously, made off among the dense thickets to the right, anddisappeared. 

Grôm knew far too well the obstinate vindictiveness of their kind tothink that they had given up the chase; but, feeling safe for thepresent, and seeing that the girl, recovered from her swoon, wassitting up and staring with awed eyes at the line of fire, he turnedall his attention to these mysterious, shining, leaping shapes towhich they owed their escape. 

With an attitude of deference, yet carrying both club and spear inreadiness, he slowly approached the barrier, at the point where theflames were lowest and least imposing. Their heat made him veryuneasy, but under the eyes of the girl he would show no sign of fear. At a distance of six or eight feet he stopped, studying the thin, upcurling tongues of brightness. Their heat, at this distance, wasuncomfortable to his naked flesh, but as he stood there wondering andtook no further hurt, his confidence grew. At length he dared tostretch out his spear-tip and touch the flames, very respectfully. Thegreen-hide thongs which bound the flint to the wood smoked, shriveledand hissed. He withdrew the weapon in alarm, and examined the tip. Itwas blackened, and hot to the touch. But, seeing that the brightdancers had taken no notice, he repeated the experiment. Several timeshe repeated it, deeply pondering, while the girl, from her place atthe edge of the grass, stared with the wide eyes of a child. 

At last, though the green thongs still held, the dry wood burst intoflame. Startled to find that when he drew the point back he brought aportion of the shining creature with it, Grôm dashed the weapon downupon the ground. The flame, insufficiently started, flickered anddied. But it left a spark, winking redly on the blackened wood. Audacious in his consuming curiosity, Grôm touched it with his finger. It stung smartly, and Grôm snatched back his finger with anexclamation of alarm. But by that touch the spark itself wasextinguished. That was an amazing thing. Sucking his finger, Grômstood gazing down at the spear-tip, which had but now been so bright, and was now so black. Plainly, it was a victory for him. He did notunderstand it. But at least the Mysterious Ones were not invincible, however much the bears feared them. Well, he did not fear them, hesaid proudly in his heart. Aloud he said to A-ya:

"The Shining Dancers are our friends, but they do not like to betouched. If you touch them, they bite. "

His heart swelled with a vast, unformulated hope. Ideas, possibilitieswhich he could not yet grasp, seethed in his brain. Dimly, butoverpoweringly, he realized that he had passed the threshold of a newworld. He picked up the spear and turned to renew his experiments. 

This time he let the fire take well hold upon the spear-tip before hewithdrew it. Then he held it upright, burning like a torch. As hegazed at it raptly a scream from the girl aroused him. She had sprungto her feet and stood staring behind her, not knowing which way to runbecause of her fear of the fire. And there, not twenty paces from her, their giant grey bulks half emerging from the thicket, stood thebears, slavering in their fury but afraid to come nearer the flame. 

With a shout, Grôm darted at them, and the wind of his going fannedhis spear-point to a fierce blaze. The girl screamed again at thesight, but bravely stood her ground. The bears shrank, growled, then turned and fled. With a dozen leaps Grôm was upon them. Theflame was already licking up the spear-shaft almost to his grip. With all his force he threw, and the flint tip buried itself in thenearest monster's haunch. The long fur blazed, and, in a frenzy ofterror, the great beasts went crashing off through the coverts. Thefire was speedily whipped out by the branches, but their panic wasuncontrollable; and long after they had passed out of sight the soundsof their wild flight could be followed. Grôm's heart came nearbursting with exultation, but he disdained to show it. He turned tothe girl, and said quietly: "They will not come back. " And the girlthrew herself at his feet in adoration. 

And now for hours Grôm sat motionless, pondering, pondering, andwatching the line of flames with deep eyes. The girl did not dare tointerrupt his thoughts. With the going of the sun came a chill breezedrawing down from the ridges. Grôm rose, led the girl nearer theflames, and reseated himself. As the girl realized the kindly andcomforting warmth her fears diminished. She laughed softly, turned hershapely body round and round in the glow, and then curled herself uplike a cat at Grôm's knees. 

At last Grôm arose once more. Picking up his remaining spear, heapproached the fire with decision, and thrust the butt, instead of thetip, into the flame. When it was well alight, he thrust it down upon atuft of withered grass. The stuff caught at once, blazed up and diedout. Then Grôm rolled the burning spear-butt on the earth till it, too, was quite extinguished. The sparks still winking in the grass hestruck with his palm. They stung him, but they perished. He drewhimself up to his full height, turned to the girl and stretched outhis blackened hand. The girl sprang to her feet, thrilled andwondering. 

"See, " said Grôm, "I have made the bright Dancing Ones my servants. The tribe shall come here. And we shall be the masters of allthings. "

Once more the girl threw herself at his feet. He seemed to her a god. But remembering how she had twice saved his life, she laid her cheekagainst his knee. He lifted her into the hollow of his great arm, andshe leaned against him, gazing up into his face, while he stoodstaring into the fire, his eyes clouded with visions. 

CHAPTER IV

THE CHILDREN OF THE SHINING ONE

I

From the lip of the narrow volcanic fissure, which ran diagonallytwo-thirds of the way across the mouth of the valley, the line of firewaved and flickered against the gathering dark. Sometimes only a fewinches high, sometimes sinking suddenly out of sight, and then againas suddenly leaping up to a height of five or six feet, the thin, gaseous flames danced elvishly. Now clear yellow, now fiery orange, now of an almost invisible violet, they shifted, and bowed theircrests, and thrust out shooting tongues, till Grôm, sitting on hishaunches and staring with fascinated eyes, had no choice but tobelieve that they were live things like himself. The girl, curled upat his side like a cat, paid little attention to the marvel of theflames. Her big, dark eyes, wild and furtive under the dark, tangledmasses of her hair, kept wandering back and forth between the man'sbrooding face and the obscure black thickets which filled the valleybehind him. The dancing flames she did not understand, but sheunderstood the ponderous crashing, and growls, and savage cries whichcame from those black thickets and slopes of tumbled rocks. The manbeing absorbed in watching the wonders of the flames, and apparentlyall-forgetful of the perils prowling back there in the dark, it wasplainly her duty to keep watch. 

From time to time Grôm would drag his eyes away from their contemplationof the flames to study intently the charred spots on his club and theburned, blackened end of his spear. He looked down at the lithe figure ofthe watching girl, and laid a great, hairy hand on her shoulder in a musingcaress, as if appraising her, and delighting in her, and finding in hera mate altogether to his desire, although but a child to his inmostthoughts. But those sounds of menace from the darkness behind him heaffected not to hear at all. He could see from the girl's eyes that themenace was not yet close at hand; and since he had learned the power of thefire, and his own mastery over that power, he felt himself suddenly littleless than a god. The fire was surely something of a god; and if he hadany measure of control over the fire, so as to make it serve him surely, then still more of the god was there in his own intelligence. His heartswelled with a pride such as he had never before conceived, and hisbrain seethed with vague but splendid possibilities. Never before hadhe, though at heart the bravest of his brave clan, been able to listento the terrible voices of the cave-bear, the cave-hyena, or thesaber-tooth without fear, without the knowledge that his own safety lay inflight. Now he feared them not at all. 

A louder roaring came out of the shadows, closer than before, and hesaw A-ya's eyes dilate as she clutched at his knee. A slow smilespread across his bony face, and he turned about, rising to his feetas he did so, and lifting the girl with him. 

With a new, strange warmth at his heart he realized how fully the girltrusted him, how cool and steady was her courage. For there, along theedge of the lighted space, glaring forth from the fringes of thethickets, were the monstrous beasts whom man had most cause to dread. Nearest, his whole tawny length emerging from the brush, crouched agiant saber-tooth with the daggers of his tusks, ten inches long, agleam in the light of the dancing flames. He was not more than thirtyor forty paces distant, and his tail twitched heavily from side toside as if he were trying to nerve himself up to a closer approach tothe fire. Some twenty paces further along the fringe of mingled lightand shadow, their bodies thrust half way forth from the undergrowth, stood a pair of huge, ruddy cave-bears, their monstrous heads held lowand swaying surlily from side to side as they eyed the prey which theydared not rush in and seize. The man-animal they had hitherto regardedas easy prey, and they were filled with rage at the temerity of thesetwo humans in remaining so near the dreaded flames. Intent upon them, they paid no heed to their great enemy, the saber-toothed, with whomthey were at endless and deadly feud. Away off to the left, quiteclear of the woods, but safely remote from the fire, a pack of hugecave-hyenas sat up on their haunches, their long, red tongues hangingout. With jaws powerful enough to crack the thigh-bones of the urus, they nevertheless hesitated to obtrude themselves on the notice eitherof the crouching saber-tooth or of the two giant bears. 

With neither the bears nor the great hyenas did Grôm anticipate anytrouble. But he felt it barely possible that the saber-tooth mightdare a rush in. Snatching up a dry branch, and leading the girl withhim by the wrist, he backed slowly nearer the flames. Terrified attheir dancing and the scorching of their breath, the girl sank down onher naked knees and covered her face with her hair. Smiling at herterror, Grôm thrust the branch into the flames. When it was all ablazehe raised it above his head, and, carrying his spear in his righthand, he rushed at the saber-tooth. For a few seconds the monsterfaced his approach, but Grôm saw the shrinking in his furious eyes, and came on fearlessly. At last the beast whipped about with ascreeching snarl, and raced back into the woods. Then Grôm turned tothe bears, but they had not stayed to receive his attentions. Thesight of the flames bursting, as it seemed, from the man's shaggy headas he ran, was too much for them, and they had slunk back discreetlyinto the shadows. 

Grôm threw the blazing stick on the ground, laid several more branchesupon it, and presently had a fine fire of his own going. He seized asmall branch and hurled it at the hyenas, sending them off with theirtails between their legs to their hiding-places on the ragged slopes. Then he fed his fire with more dry wood till the fierce heat of itdrove him back. Returning to the side of the wondering girl, he satdown, and contemplated his handiwork with swelling pride. When theflames died down he piled on more branches till they blazed again tothe height of the nearest tree-tops. This he repeated, thoughtfully, several times, till he had assured himself of his power to make thisbright, devouring god great or little at his pleasure. 

This stupendous fact established clearly, Grôm brought an armful ofgrass and foliage, and made the girl take her sleep. He himselfcontinued for an hour or two his experiments with the fire, buildingsmall ones in a circle about him, discovering that green brancheswould not burn well, and brooding with knit brows over each new centerof light and heat which he created. 

Then, seated on his haunches beside the sleeping A-ya, he pondered onthe future of his tribe, on the change in its fortunes which thismysterious new creature was bound to bring about. At last, when thenight was half worn through, he awakened the girl, bade her keep sharpwatch, and threw himself down to sleep, indifferent to the roars, andsnarls, and dreadful cries which came from the darkness of the uppervalley. 

The valley looked straight into the east. When the sun rose, itsunclouded, level rays paled the dancing barrier of flames almost toinvisibility. Refreshed by their few hours' sleep in the vital warmth, Grôm and the girl stood erect in the flooding light and scanned thestrange landscape. Grôm's sagacious eyes noted the fertility of thelevel lands at a distance from the fire, and of the clefts, ledges andlower slopes of the tumbled volcanic hills. Here and there he made outthe openings of caves, half overgrown with vines and bush. And he wassatisfied that this was the land for his tribe to occupy. 

That it was infested with all those monstrous beasts which were Man'sdeadliest foes seemed to him no longer a fact worth considering. Thebright god which he had conquered should be made to conquer them. Someinkling of his purposes he confided to the girl, who stood looking upat him with eyes of dog-like devotion from under the matted splendorof her hair. If he was still the man she loved, her mate and lover, yet was he also now a sort of demi-god, since she had seen him play athis ease with the flames, and drive the hyena, the saber-tooth and theterrible red bear before him. 

When the two started on their journey back to the Country of theLittle Hills, Grôm carried with him a bundle of blazing brands. He hadconceived the idea of keeping the bright god alive by feeding himcontinually as they went, and of renewing his might from time to timeby stopping to build a big fire. 

The undertaking proved a troublesome one from the first. The brandkept the great beasts at a distance, time and again the red coalsalmost died out, and Grôm had anxious and laborious moments nursingthem again into activity; and the care of the mysterious things madeprogress slow. Grôm learned much, and rapidly, in these anxiousefforts. He discovered once, just at a critical moment, the remarkableefficacy of dry grass. A bear as big as an ox came rushing upon them, just when the flames were flickering out along the bundle of brands. A-ya started to run, but Grôm's nerve was of steel. 

Ordering her to stop, he flung the brands to the ground, and snatcheda double handful of grass to feed the dying flame. Luckily, the grasswas dry. It flared up on the sudden. The bear stopped short. Grômpiled on more grass, shouted arrogantly, and rushed at the beast witha blazing handful. It was a light and harmless flame, almost instantlyextinguished. But it was too mysterious for the monster to face. 

Grôm was wise enough not to follow up his victory. Returning to thefire he fed it to a safe volume. And the girl, flinging herself downin a passion of relief and adoration, embraced his knees. 

After this they journeyed slowly, Grôm tending the brands withvigilant care, and striving to break down the girl's terror ofthem. That night he built three fires about the base of a hugetree, gathered a supply of dry wood, taught the girl to feed theflames--which she did with head bowed in awe--and passed the hoursof darkness, once so dreaded, in proud defiance of the great beastswhich prowled and roared beyond the circle of light. He made thegirl sleep, but he himself was too prudent to sleep, lest thesefires of his own creation should prove false when his eye was not uponthem. 

The following day, about midday, when he slept heavily in the heat, the fire went out. It had got low, and the girl, attempting to reviveit, had smothered it with too much fuel. In an agony of fear andremorse, she knelt at Grôm's side, awakened him, and showed him whatshe had done. She expected a merciless beating, according to therough-and-ready customs of her tribe. But Grôm had always been held alittle peculiar, especially in his aversion to the beating of women, so that certain females of the tribe had even been known to questionhis manhood on that account. 

Furthermore, he regarded the girl with a tenderness, an admiration, anappreciation, which he could not but wonder at in himself, seeing thathe had never heard of it as a customary thing that a man should regarda woman in any such manner. At the same time he was in a state ofexaltation over his strange achievements, and hardly open, at themoment, to any common or base brutality of rage. 

He gave the girl one terrible look, then went and strove silently withthe dead, black embers. The girl crept up to him on her knees, weeping. For a few seconds he paid her no heed. But when he found thatthe flames had fled beyond recovery, he lifted her up, drew her closeto him, and comforted her. 

"You have let the Bright One escape, " said he. "But do not be afraid. He lives back there in the valley of the bears, and I will capture himagain. "

And when the girl realized that he had no thought of beating her, butonly wished to comfort and shield her, then she felt quite sure he wasa god, and her heart nearly burst with the passion of her love. 

II

It galled Grôm's proud heart to find himself now compelled, throughloss of the fire, to go warily, to scan the thicket, to keep hidden, to hold spear and club always in readiness, and to climb into a treeat night for safety like the apes. But he let no sign of his chagrin, or of his anxiety, appear. Like the crafty hunter and wise leader thathe was, he forgot no one of his ancient precautions. 

They had by this time passed beyond the special haunts of the red bearand the saber-tooth. Twice they had to run before the charge of thegreat wooly rhinoceros, against whose massive hide Grôm's spear andclub would have been about as effective as a feather duster. But theyhad fled mockingly, for the clumsy monster was no match for them inspeed. Once, too, they had been treed by a bull urus, a gigantic whitebeast with a seven-foot spread of polished horns. 

But his implacable and patient rage they had cunningly evaded bymaking off unseen and unheard, through the upper branches. They cameto earth again half a mile away, and ran on gaily, laughing at thepicture of the furious and foolish beast waiting there at the foot ofthe tree for them to come down. Once a prowling leopard confrontedthem for a moment, only to flee in great leaps before their instantand unhesitating attack. Once a huge bird, nearly nine feet high, andwith a beak over a foot in length, struck at them savagely, with ashrill hissing, through a fringe of reeds, because they hadincautiously come too near its nest. But they killed it, and feastedon its eggs. And so, without further misadventure, they came at lastto the skirts of their own country, and looked once more on therounded, familiar, wind-swept tops of the Little Hills, sacred to thebarrows of their dead. 

It was toward sunset, and the long, rosy glow was flooding the littleamphitheater wherein the remnants of the tribe were gathered, whenGrôm crossed the brook, and came striding up the slope, with A-yaclose behind him. She had been traveling at his side all through thejourney, but here she respected the etiquette of her tribe, and fellbehind submissively. 

Hardly noticing, or not heeding if he noticed that the tribe offeredno vociferous welcome, and seemed sullenly surprised at hisappearance, Grôm strode straight to the Chief, whom he saw sitting onthe judgment stone, and threw down spear and club at his feet in signof fealty. But A-ya, following, was keen to note the hostile attitudeof the tribe. Her defiant eyes darted everywhere, and everywhere notedblack looks. She could not understand it, but she divined that therewas some plot afoot against Grôm. Her heart swelled with rage, and herdark-maned head went up arrogantly, for she felt as if the strongestand wisest of the tribe were now but children in comparison with herlord. But, though children, they were many, and she closed up behindhim for a guard, grasping more firmly the shaft of her short, serviceable spear. She saw the broad, black, scowling visage of youngMawg, towering over a little group of his kinsfolk, and eyeing herwith mingled greed and rage, and she divined at once that he was atthe back of whatever mischief might be brewing. She answered his lookwith one of mocking scorn, and then turned her attention to the Chief, who was sitting in grim silence, the customary hand of welcomeominously withheld. 

A haughty look came over Grôm's face, his broad shoulders squaredthemselves, and he met the Chief's eyes sternly. 

"I have done the bidding of Bawr the Chief, " he said, in a clearvoice, so that all the tribe might hear. "I have found a place wherethe tribe may hold themselves secure against all enemies. And I havecome back, as was agreed, to lead the tribe thither before our enemiesdestroy us. I have done great deeds. I have not spared myself. I havecome quickly. I have deserved well of the people. Why has Bawr theChief no welcome for me?"

A murmur arose from the corner where Mawg and his friends weregrouped, but a glance from the Chief silenced it. With his piercinggaze making relentless inquisition of the eyes that answered his sosteadily, he seemed to ponder Grôm's words. Slowly the anger fadedfrom his scarred and massy face, for he knew men; and this man, thoughhis most formidable rival in strength and prestige, he instinctivelytrusted. 

"You have been accused, " said he at length, slowly, "of deserting thetribe in our weakness--"

A puzzled look had come over Grôm's face at the word "accused"; thenhis deep eyes blazed, and he broke in upon the Chief's speech withoutceremony. 

"Show me my accusers!" he demanded harshly. The Chief waved his handfor silence. 

"In our weakness!" he repeated. "But you have returned to us. So I seethat charge was false. Also, you have been accused of stealing thegirl A-ya. But you have brought her back. I see not what more youraccusers have against you. "

Grôm turned, and, with a quick, decisive motion, drew A-ya to hisside. 

"Bawr the Chief knows that I am his servant, and a true man!" said hesternly. "I did not steal the girl. She followed me, and I had nothought of it. "

Angry jeers came from Mawg's corner, but Grôm smiled coldly, and wenton:

"Not till near evening of the second day, when she was chased bywolves, did she reveal herself to me. And when I understood why shehad come, I looked on her, and I saw that she was very fair and verybrave. And I took her. So that now she is my woman, and I hold to her, Chief! But I will pay you for her whatsoever is just, for you are theChief. And now let Bawr show me my accusers, that I may have done withthem quickly. For I have much to tell. "

"Not so, Grôm, " said the Chief, stretching out his hand. "I amsatisfied that you are a true man. And for the girl, that will wearrange between us later. But I will not confront you with youraccusers, for there shall be no fighting between ourselves when ourwarriors that are left us are so few. And in this I know that you, being wise, will agree with me. Come, and we two will talk of what isto be done. "

He got up from his seat, an immense and masterful figure, to lead theway to his own cave, where they might talk in private. But Grômhesitated, fearing lest annoyance should befall A-ya if he left heralone with his enemies. 

"And the girl, Chief?" said he. "I would not have her troubled. "

Bawr turned. He swept a comprehensive and significant glance over thegaping crowd. 

"The girl A-ya, " said he in his great voice which thundered over theamphitheater, "is Grôm's woman. I have spoken. "

And he strode off toward his cave door. Grôm picked up his club andspear. And the girl, with a haughty indifference she was far fromfeeling, strolled off toward the cave of certain old women, kinsfolkof the Chief. 

But as the meaning of the Chief's words penetrated Mawg's dull witshe gave vent to a great bellow of rage, and snatched up a spear tohurl at Grôm. Before he could launch it, however, his kinsmen, whohad no wish to bring down upon themselves both Grôm's wrath and thatof the Chief, fell upon him and bore down his arm. Raging blindly, Mawg struggled with them, and, having the strength of a bull, he wasnear to wrenching himself free. But other men of the tribe, seeingfrom the Chief's action that their bitterness against Grôm hadbeen unjustified, and remembering his past services, ran up andtook a hand in reducing Mawg to submission. For a few seconds Grômlooked on contemptuously; then he turned on his heel and followedthe Chief, as if he did not hold his rival worth a further thought. Mawg struggled to his feet. Grôm had disappeared. But his eyes fellon the figure of A-ya, slim and brown and tall, standing in theentrance of the near-by cave. He made as if to rush upon her, but abunch of men stood in the way, plainly ready to stop him. He looked athis kinsmen, but they hung their heads sullenly. Blind with furythough he was, and slow of wit, he could not but see that the tribeas a whole was now against him. Stuttering with his rage, he shoutedto the girl, "You will see me again!" Snatching up his club andspears, he rushed forth from the amphitheater, darted down the slope, and plunged into the thick woods beyond the brook. His kinsmenwithdrew sullenly into their cave, followed by two young women. Andthe rest of the people looked at each other doubtfully, troubled atthis sudden schism in the weakened tribe. 

"One more good warrior gone!" muttered an old man through his bush ofmatted white beard. 

That night Grôm was too wary to sleep, suspecting that his enemy mightreturn and try to snatch the girl from him under the cover of thedark. 

He was not attacked or disturbed, however, but just before dawn, against the gray pallor beyond the mouth of the pass, he marked fourshapes slinking forth. As they did not return, he did not think itworth while to raise the alarm. When day came, it was found that twokinsmen of Mawg, with the two young women who were attached to them, had fled to join the deserter in the bush. The Chief, indignant atthis further weakening of the tribe, declared them outlaws, andordered that all--except the women, who were needed as mothers--shouldbe killed as tribal traitors, at sight. 

III

As was natural since he was trying to present a totally newconception, with no known analogies save in the lightning and the sun, Grôm found it impossible to convey to the Chief's mind any real ideaof the nature of his tremendous discovery. He did succeed, however, inmaking it clear to Bawr that there was a certain mighty Bright One, capable of putting even the saber-tooth and the red bear to instantflight, and that he had somehow managed to subdue this powerful andmysterious being into the service of the tribe. Bawr had examined withdeep musing the strange black bite of the Bright One on Grôm's cluband spear. And he realized readily enough that with such an ally thetribe, even in its present state of weakness, would be able to defyany further invasions of the bow-legged beast-men from the east. Therewas a rumor, vague enough but disquieting, of another migration of thebeast-men under way. So there was no time to lose. Bawr gave ordersthat the tribe should get together their scanty possessions of food, skins and weapons, and make a start on the morrow for their new home. 

The attempts of the girl, meanwhile, to explain about the fire andGrôm's miraculous subjugation of it to his will, had only spreadterror in the tribe. The dread of this unknown Bright One, which wasplainly capable of devouring them all if Grôm should lose control ofit, was more nerve-shaking than their dread of the beast-men. Moreover, there was the natural reluctance to leave the old, familiar dwellings for an unknown, distrusted land, confessedlythe haunt of those monstrous beasts which they had most cause to fear. Then, too, there were not a few in the tribe who professed to thinkthat the hordes of the Bow-legs were never likely to come that wayagain. No wonder, therefore, that there was grumbling, and protest, and shrill lamentation in the caves; but Bawr being in no mood, since the defection of Mawg and his party, to tolerate any opposition, and Grôm being now regarded as a dangerous wizard, the preparationfor departure went on as smoothly as if all were of one mind. Packing was no great matter to the People of the Little Hills, therichest of whom could transport all his wealth on the back of thefeeblest of his wives. So it came that before the sun marked noonthe whole tribe was on the march, trailing forth from the neck ofthe amphitheater at the heels of Grôm and A-ya, and picking their wayover the bones of their slain enemies which the vultures and thejackals had already polished white. Bawr, the Chief, came last, seeing to it that there were no laggards; and as the tail of thestraggling procession left the pass he climbed swiftly to thenearest pinnacle of rock to take observation. He marked Grôm andthe girl, the tribe strung out dejectedly behind them, winding offto the left along the foot of the bare hills; and a pang of grief, for an instant, twitched his massive features. Then he turned his eyesto the right. Very far off, in a space of open ground by thebrookside, he marked the movement of confused, living masses, of adull brown on the green. A closer look convinced him that themoving masses were men--new hordes of the beast-men, the gaping-nosedBow-legs. 

"Grôm is a true man, " he muttered, with satisfaction, and went leapinglike a stag down the slope to rejoin the tribe. When news of what hehad seen was passed from mouth to mouth through the tribe every murmurwas hushed, and the sulkiest laggards pushed on feverishly, as ifdreading a rush of the beast-men from every cleft and glade. 

The journey proved, for the most part, uneventful. Traveling in acompact mass, only by broad day, their numbers and their air ofconfidence kept the red bear and the saber-tooth, the black lion andthe wolf-pack, from venturing to molest them. By the Chief's ordersthey maintained a noisy chatter, with laughter and shouting, as soonas they felt themselves safely beyond range of the beast-men's ears. For Bawr had observed that even the saber-tooth had a certainuneasiness at the sound of many human voices together. At night--andit was their rule to make camp while the sun was yet several hourshigh--with the aid of their flint spear-heads they would laboriouslycut down the saplings of the long-thorned acacia, and surround thecamp with a barrier which the monsters dared not assail. Even so, however, the nights were trying enough to the stoutest nerves. Halfthe tribe at a time was obliged to stand on guard, and there waslittle sleep to refresh the weariest when the shadows beyond thebarriers were alive with mutterings and prowlings, and terrible, paling, gleaming eyes. 

On the fourth day of the journey, however, the tribe met a foe whosedense brain was quite unimpressed by the menace of the human voice, and whose rage took no account of their numbers or their confidence. An enormous bull urus--perhaps the same beast which some days earlier, had driven Grôm and the girl into the tree-tops--burst up, drippingand mud-streaked from his wallow in a reedy pool, and came chargingupon the travelers with a roar. No doubt an outcast from the herd, hewas mad with the lust of killing. With shouts of warning and shrieksof fear the tribe scattered in every direction. The nearest warriorshurled their spears as they sprang aside, and several of the weaponswent deep into the monster's flanks, but without checking him. He hadfixed his eyes on one victim, an old man with a conspicuous shock ofsnow-white hair, and him he followed inexorably. The doomed wretchscreamed with despair when he found himself thus hideously selected, and ran, doubling like a rabbit. Just as the monster overtook him hefell, paralyzed with his fright, and one tremendous horn pinned him tothe earth. At this instant the Chief arrived, running up from the rearof the line, and Grôm, coming from the front. The Chief, closing infearlessly, swung his club with all his strength across the beast'sfront, blinding one eye, and confusing him for the fraction of amoment. And in that moment, Grôm, calculating his blow with precision, drove his spear clean through the massive throat. As he sprang back, twisting his ragged weapon in the wound and tearing it free, themonster, with a hoarse cough, staggered forward across his victim, fell upon his knees, and slowly sank, while the blood emptied itselfin enormous, smoking jets from the wound. 

The incident caused a day's delay in the march; for there was the deadelder to be buried, with heavy stones heaped over his body, accordingto the custom of the tribe, and there was also the meat of the slainbull to be cut up for carrying--a rank food, but sustaining, and notto be despised when one is on a journey with uncertainties ahead. Andthe delay was more than compensated for by the new spirit which nowseized this poor, fugitive remnant of the Tribe of the Little Hills. The speedy and spectacular triumph over a foe so formidable as thegiant bull urus was unanimously accepted as an omen of good fortune. 

As they approached the valley whose mouth was guarded by the line ofvolcanic fire, Grôm purposely led the tribe by such a path that theyshould get no glimpse of the dancing flames until close upon them. Down behind a long line of woods he led them, with no warning of whatwas to come. Then suddenly around into the open; and there, not ahundred paces distant, was the valley-mouth, and the long, thin lineof flickering scarlet tongues drawn across it. 

As the people came in sight of the incomprehensible phenomenon, theystared for a moment, gasping, or uttering low cries; then they fellupon their faces in awe. Grôm remained standing, leaning upon hisspear; and A-ya stood with bowed head close behind him. When theChief, shepherding and guarding the rear flanks, emerged around theelbow of woods and saw his people thus prostrate before the shiningwonder, he too was moved to follow their example, for his heart wentcold within him. But not without reason was he Chief, for he couldcontrol himself as well as others. A pallor spread beneath the smokytan of his broad features, but without an instant's hesitation hestrode to the front, and stood like Grôm, with unbowed head, leaningcalmly on his great club. His thought was that the Shining One must beindeed a god, and might, indeed, slay him from afar, like thelightning, but it could not make him afraid. 

Grôm gave him a quick look of approval. "Tell the people, " said he, "to follow us round through the open space yonder, and into thevalley, that we may make camp, for there are many great beasts here, and very fierce. And tell them not to approach the Shining One, lesthe smite them, but also not to fear, for he will not come at them. "

When the people--trembling, staring with fascinated eyes at thedancing array, and shrinking nervously from the strange warmth--hadall been gathered into the open space between the fire and thethickets, Grôm led the Chief up to the flames and hurriedly explainedto him what he had found out as to how they must be managed. Then, leaving him to ponder the miracle, and to experiment, he took A-ya tohelp him build other fires along the edge of the thickets in order tokeep the monsters at bay. And all the while the tribe sat watching, huddled on their haunches, with mouths agape and eyes rolling inamazement. 

Bawr the Chief, meanwhile, was revolving many things in his sagaciousbrain, as he alternately lighted and extinguished the little, eatingflames which fixed themselves upon the dry wood when he held it in theblaze. His mind was of a very different order from that of Grôm, though, perhaps, not less capacious and capable. Grôm was thediscoverer, the initiator, while Bawr was essentially the ruler, concerned to apply all he learned to the extension and securing of hispower. It was his realization of Grôm's transparent honesty andindifference to power which made him so free from jealousy of Grôm'sprestige. His shrewd perceptions told him that Grôm would far rathersee him rule the tribe, so long as he ruled it effectually, than betroubled with the task himself. But there were others in the tribewhom he suspected of being less disinterested--who were capable ofbecoming troublesome if ever he should find his strength failing. Oneof these, in particular, a gigantic, black-browed fellow by the nameof Ne-boo, remotely akin to the deserter Mawg, was now watching himwith eyes more keen and considerate than those of his companions. AsBawr became conscious of this inquiring, crafty gaze, he made a slip, and closed his left hand on a portion of his branch which was stillglowing red. With superb nerve he gave no sign of the hurt. And hethought quickly: he had taken a liberty with the Bright One, and beenbitten by those mysterious, shining teeth which left a scar of black. Well, someone else should be bitten, also. Calmly heating the branchagain till it was a live coal for three-quarters of its length, hecalled the crafty-eyed warrior to him. The man came, uneasy, but fullof interest. 

"Take this, and hold it for me, " said Bawr, and tossed him the redbrand. With shrinking hands Ne-boo caught it, to drop it instantlywith a yell of pain and terror. It fell, scraping his leg, and hisfoot, and in his fright he threw himself down beside it, begging itnot to smite him again. 

"Strange, " said Bawr, in a voice for all the tribe to hear, "theShining One will not suffer Ne-boo to touch him. " With the air of ahigh priest he picked the brand up, and held it again into the flames. And Grôm returning at this moment to his side, he commanded in a lowvoice: "Let none but ourselves attend or touch the Bright One. "

Grôm, his mind occupied with plans for the settling of the tribe, agreed without asking the reason for this decree. He was thinkingabout getting the tribe housed in the caves which he had noticed inthe steep sides of the valley. He knew well enough that these caveswere the houses of the red bear, the saber-tooth and the bone-crushinghyenas, but, as he explained to the Chief with thrilling elation, theShining One would drive these monsters out, and teach them to keeptheir distance. To Bawr, who had had some experience in his day withthe red bear and the saber-tooth, and who had not yet seen all thatthese dancing tongues of gold and scarlet could do, the enterpriseseemed a formidable one. But he sagaciously reserved his judgment, pondering things that he felt sure Grôm would not dream of. 

That night, when all was thick darkness beyond the magic circle of thefires, the People of the Little Hills sat or crouched trembling andwondering, while monstrous dim shapes of such bears or tigers as theyhad never imagined in their worst nightmares prowled roaring all aboutthem, held off by nothing more substantial than just those thin anddarting tongues of flame. That the little, bright things could biteterribly they had evidence enough, both in the charred and corrodedwood which the flames had licked, and in the angry wounds of Ne-boo. At the same time they saw their Chief and Grôm apparently handling theTerror with impunity, and the girl A-ya approaching it and serving itfreely, though always with bowed head and every mark of awe. 

But what made the deepest, the most ineffaceable impression on theminds of the tribe was to see Grôm and the Chief, each waving a pairof dead branches all aflame, charge at a pair of giant saber-toothswho had ventured too near, and drive them scurrying like frightenedsheep into the bush. Repeating the tactics which he had previouslyfound so effective, Grôm hurled one of his flaming weapons after thefugitives--an example which the Chief, not to be outshone, followedinstantly. The result was startling. The brands chanced to fall wherethere was a great accumulation of dry wood and twigs and leaves. In amoment, as it seemed, the flames had leapt up into full fury, and werechasing the fugitives up the valley with a roar. In the sudden greatglare could be seen saber-tooths stretching out in panic-strickenflight, burly red bear fleeing with their awkward but deadly swiftgallop, huge hyenas scattering to this side and that, and many furtiveunknown creatures driven into a blind and howling rout. Grôm himselfwas as thunderstruck as any one at the amazing result of his action, but his quick wits told him to disguise his astonishment, and bearhimself as if it were exactly what he had planned. The Chief copiedhis attitude with scrupulous precision and unfailing nerve, thoughquite prepared to see the red whirlwind suddenly turn back and blothimself, the audacious Grôm, and the whole shuddering tribe from theface of the outraged earth. But no such thing happened. The torrent offlame raged straight up the valley, cutting a path some fifty oddpaces in width, and leaving a track of smoldering, winking, red stemsand stumps behind it. And all the beasts hid themselves in theirterror so that not one of them was seen again that night. As for thePeople of the Little Hills, they were now ready to fall down and putdust in their hair in utter abasement, if either Grôm or the Chief somuch as looked at them. 

Soon after sunrise the next day, the Chief and Grôm, bearing lightedbrands, and followed close by A-ya with a bundle of dry faggots, twigsand grass, took possession of two great caves on the southward-facingslope of the valley. The giant bears which occupied one of them fledignominiously at the first threat of the flames, having been scorchedand thoroughly cowed by the conflagration of the previous night. Theother cave had been already vacated by the hyena pack, which had nostomach to face these throwers of flame. Before the mouth of eachcave, at a safe distance, a fire was lighted--a notice to all thebeasts that their rule was at an end. The whole tribe was set to thegathering of a great store of fuel, which was heaped about the mouthsof the caves as a shield against the weather. Then the people began tosettle themselves in their new home, secure in the faith that not eventhe hordes of the Bow-legs, should they chance that way, would havethe temerity to face their new and terrible protector. 

When all was ordered to his satisfaction, the Chief called Grôm to hisside. The two stood apart, and watched the tall figure of A-ya movingfrom the one fire to the other, and tending them reverently, as oneperforming a rite. Grôm's eyes took on a certain illumination at thesight of her, a look which the Chief had never observed in any man'seyes before. But he thought little of it, for his mind was full ofother matters. 

"It is well, " said he presently, in a low voice, "that the service andunderstanding of the Bright One should not be allowed to the people, but should be kept strictly to ourselves, and to those whom we shallchoose to initiate. I shall appoint the two best men of my own kin, and two others whom you shall select, as servants of the Bright One. And I will make a law that the people shall henceforth worship onlythe Bright One, instead of, as heretofore, the Thunder, and the Wind, and the unknown Spirits, which, after all, as far as I can see, havenever been able to do much either for or against us. But this BrightOne is a real god, such as we can be sure of. And you and I shall behis priests. And only we shall be allowed to understand him. "

"That is good, " agreed Grôm, whose brain was busy devising other waysof making the wild flames serviceable to man. "But, " he went on, "there is A-ya. She knows as much about it as you and I. "

The Chief pondered a moment. 

"Either the girl must die, " said he, eyeing Grôm's face, "or she mustbe a priest along with us. "

"I think she will be a very good priest, " said Grôm drily, his eyesresting upon her. 

Then the Chief, ascending a rock between the two fires, spoke to thepeople, and decreed as he had said. He told a little about the ShiningOne, just so much as he thought it good for his hearers to know. Hedeclared that the ones he had chosen for the great honor of servingthe fires must tend them by turns, night and day, and guard them withtheir lives; for that, if one or the other should be suffered to dieout, some great disaster would assuredly come upon the tribe. 

"And henceforth, " he concluded, "you shall not be called the People ofthe Little Hills; for these ridges, indeed, are not such hills asthose whose bald and windy tops are keeping the bones of our fathers. But you shall be known and feared greatly by our enemies as 'TheChildren of the Shining One, ' under whose protection I declare you. "

CHAPTER V

THE PULLER-DOWN OF TREES

On the broken hill-slope overlooking the Valley of Fire, in the twogreat caves known as the Cave of the Bears and the Cave of the Hyenas, the tribe of the Children of the Shining One now dwelt secure andbegan to recover heart. Before each cave-mouth, tended night and day, burned the sacred flame, its tongues licked upwards in gold andscarlet with a radiance from which all the tribe, with the soleexceptions of Bawr, the Chief, and Grôm, his right hand and councilor, were wont to avert their eyes in awe whenever they passed it in theircomings and goings. Only from a distance would they presume to look atthe flames directly; and ever as they looked their wonder and theirreverence grew. Their trust in the protection of the Shining One cameto have no bounds, for night after night would the great red bearsreturn, prowling in the mysterious gloom just beyond the ring oflight, with their dreadful eyes turned fixedly upon their formerhabitation, only to be driven off ignominiously when Grôm rushed atthem with a shout and a flaming torch above his head. And night afternight would the troops of the hyenas come back, their monstrous-jowledheads swinging low from their mighty shoulders, to sit and howl theirdevilish laughter above their ancient lair, only to slink off in cowedsilence when the Chief would hurl a blazing brand among them. When thebeasts were thus discomfited and abashed, the boldest of the warriorswould go leaping after them and bring down the hindermost with spears. So it came about that presently the great animals knew themselvesbeaten, and sullenly withdrew to the other side of the hills. 

It was just this country at the other side of the hills which mostappealed to the restless imagination of Grôm. Within the valley--whichwidened out, as it receded from its fiery gateway, to enclose leagueupon league of fertile plain--was good hunting, along with anabundance of roots, fruits and edible herbs. But in Grôm's heartburned that spirit of unquenchable expectation which has led the raceof Man upwards through all obstacles--the urge to find out ever whatlies beyond. So the saw-toothed line of these dark, volcanic summitsdrew him irresistibly, with the promise of unknown wonders hiddenbehind them. 

During these few weeks since coming to the Valley of the Fire, Grômhad been tirelessly experimenting with the bright element, trying thiskind of fuel and that, one after another, in order to learn what foodwas most acceptable to it. He learned that certain substances it woulddevour in raging haste, only to fail and die soon after; or not trulyto die, he imagined, but to flee back unseen to its dancing, flickering source at the valley mouth. Other substances he found thatit would consume slowly, but pertinaciously. While into yet others, such as dry turf and punk, it would eat its way and hide, maintainingtherein for a long time a retired but potent existence, ready to leapinto radiant life under certain provocation. His invention stimulatedby these experiments, he had made himself several hollow tubes of athick green bark whipped about with thongs, and had stuffed them withthat mixture of turf and punk which he found best calculated to holdthe furtive seeds of fire alive. 

With one of these slow torches alight, and several spare ones slungover his shoulders, Grôm set out to cross the pointed hills and seeknew wonders in the lands beyond. The tall girl, A-ya, went with him. This not being customary in the tribe, they gave reasons. Grôm saidthat he needed the girl because she alone knew how rightly to serveand tend the Shining One in combat. It was a good reason, but he wasamazed to find in his heart so deep a desire for her that he wasill-content whenever his eyes could not rest upon her. There was noone in the tribe with whom he could discuss this strange emotion, forno one, not even the wise and subtle-minded Chief, would havecomprehended it--romantic love not yet having come openly to these menof the Morning of Time. So Grôm gave the lesser reason, which all, including himself, could understand. As for the girl, she said thatwhatever her lord commanded she must needs obey, which she did with amost seemly readiness. But in her heart she knew that if her man hadcommanded her to stay behind, she would have obeyed only so long as heremained in sight, and would then have followed him. 

Like Grôm, the girl carried two flint-headed spears. Both wore clumsybut effective slivers of flint, for knives, in their girdles oftwisted skin. The girl, besides her weapons, carried a substantialburden of strips of meat dried hard in the sun, in case game shouldprove scarce or elusive in the land beyond the hills. But when theyhad got well out of sight of the caves, Grôm turned, relieved her ofher burdens which, according to tribal conventions, it was her duty tocarry for her man, and gave her instead the light but precious tube offire. 

As they ascended the ragged slopes, vegetation grew sparse, and whentoward nightfall they gained the pass which Grôm was making for--adeep cleft between two steep red and purple peaks--the rock beneaththeir feet was naked but for a low growth of flowering herbs andthorn. The pass was too high for the aloe and mesembryanthemum toflourish, and the lava-bed which floored it was yet too new to haveclothed itself in any of the larger mountain-loving trees. Here theypassed the night, in a shallow niche of rock with a fire before it;and the fire being visible from a long way off, no prowlers cared evento approach it. 

On the following day they traveled swiftly, but the pass was long. Itwas near sunset again when at last the rocks fell away to either side, and they saw spread out below their feet the land which they had cometo explore. 

It was a vast, rolling plain, golden-green with rank, cane-likegrasses, dotted with innumerable clumps of trees, and laced with fullwatercourses which lay in spacious loops of blue and silver. Here andthere lay broad, irregular patches where the grass did not flourish, and these were of vivid emerald-green from some unknown growth. 

Along the horizon to the north sparkled a great water. And half-waydown the steep, toward the right, smoked and smouldered a shallow, saucer-shaped crater from whose broken lower rim a purple-brownserpent of comparatively recent lava descended in sluggish curvesacross the intense green. 

Somewhat to the girl's apprehension, Grôm seemed anxious toinvestigate the smoking crater, but the only practicable path down themountain led them away from it, so he was content to leave it foranother time and another, perhaps less repellent, approach. 

Descending presently into a region of ledges and ravines clothed withdense thickets, they found on every hand traces of the giant bears andthe saber-tooth tigers whom they had driven from the caves in theValley of Fire. Grôm hurriedly whirled the smoldering torch into aflame, and from it lighted a couple of resinous brands, one forhimself, and one for A-ya to carry. Thus armed, they fearlesslyfollowed the broad trail of bears, which led them very convenientlydown the steep. And bear and saber-tooth alike, at sight of the flamethus apparently seeking them out, remembered their recent scorchingdiscomfiture, and slunk off like whipped curs. 

Grôm's immediate object was to make his way straight to the shores ofthat great water, whose gleaming on the horizon had been like aninvitation to his inquiring spirit. But when early in the forenoon ofthe fourth day they reached the lowlands, he found that his way wouldbe anything but straight. The immense grasses, a species of cane, grewso tall, so dense and so thick in the stem, that it was impossible toforce a path through them just where he would. 

He saw that he must use the trails of the wild beasts, whichintersected it in all directions. There were the tracks of everyanimal he knew--the hunters and the hunted alike--and of many morewhich he did not know. But one broad trail in particular arrested hisattention. It struck such fear to the heart of the girl, whose eyeswere keen and understanding, that her knees trembled beneath her, andhad she dared she would have begged Grôm to turn back from a landwhich held such monsters. 

Even Grôm himself felt a thrill of awe as he stared at the trail whichbespoke so mighty a traveler. Wherever it led, the sturdiest growthswere crushed flat as if some huge bowlder from the mountains had beenrolled over them. And the monster footprints, which here and therestamped themselves clearly in the trail, were thrice the size of thoseof the hugest mammoth. 

Grôm stooped and studied these footprints, pondering them with knitbrows. What manner of giant it might be which moved on such colossaland misshapen members it was beyond his wits to guess. But of a suretyit was a fine roadmaker!

With a confident arrogance born of the knowledge that he was the lordof Fire, he deliberately chose to pursue this dreadful trail. And thegirl, hiding her terror lest it should diminish her credit in hissight, followed close at his elbow, her bright eyes tirelesslysearching the jungle on either side. 

Suddenly behind them came a confused, terrifying noise of pantingbreaths and trampling feet. It came sweeping down the broad trail. There were grunting cries, also; and Grôm understood at once that aherd of pig-tapirs--heavy-footed, timorous beasts, as tall asheifers--were sweeping down upon them in mad flight before someunknown pursuer. 

Against that blind panic, that headlong frantic rush, he knew thatblazing brands would avail nothing. He clutched the girl by the hand. "Come!" he ordered. And they fled side by side down the trail. 

It was in their minds to climb the first suitable tree they shouldcome to, and let the rout go by. In half a minute or so, over the topsof the giant grasses, they sighted such a tree, only a few hundredyards ahead. The trail, swerving opportunely, appeared to leaddirectly towards its foot, and they raced on, the girl now laughingsoftly with excitement, and forgetting her fear of the unknown becauseof the known peril behind her. It pleased her curiously to find thather man had not grown too divine to be ready to run away on fittingoccasion; and she kept glancing at him from under her dark tangle ofhair with eyes of passionate possession. 

The wild uproar behind was drawing nearer swiftly, but the refuge wasnow not more than fifty paces ahead. All at once the way to it wasbarred. Out from a little side-track on the right came lumbering agigantic rhinoceros, his creased and folded hide clothed in mattedbrown wool and caked with clay. He swung round into the trail, almostblocking it with his bulk, stared for a couple of seconds with evillittle eyes at the two slim beings before him, then lowered the hugedouble horn that armed his snout, and charged at them with a grunt offury. 

Caught thus fairly between the devil before, and the deep sea oftrampling hoofs behind, Grôm had no choice. A second's waving of thelighted brands convinced him that the rhinoceros was too dense ofbrain to fear the fire, or even to notice it. Once more clutching thegirl's hand, he ran back a little way, seeking to draw the two perilstogether, and give them an opportunity to distract each other'sattention. 

He ran back till the flying, plunging herd of the pig-tapirs came intofull view around the curve of the trail. Then, with all his strength, he forced his way into the grass, on the left, shouldering aside theupright stems to make room for the girl to enter. She hurled herblazing brand full into the face of the rhinoceros, hoping to confuseor divert him for an instant, then thrust herself lithely in pastGrôm. 

The rhinoceros was diverted for an instant. The smoke and sparks halfblinded him, and in a paroxysm of fury he checked himself to tramplethe strange assailant under foot. Then he thundered forward. But thetough stems of the grass had closed up again. The two fugitives werehidden. He saw the packed herd of the tapirs bearing down upon him;and, forgetting the insignificant creatures who had first roused hisanger, he charged forward at full speed to meet this new foe. 

Realizing well enough that in three or four seconds more the crashwould come, and that the struggle between the rhinoceros and themaddened herd would be little short of a cataclysm, Grôm and the girlstruggled breathlessly to force themselves to a safe distance lestthey should be crushed in the mêlée. 

The sweat ran down into their eyes, and swarms of tiny insects, breeding in the giant stems, choked their throats and nostrils; butthey wrestled their way onward blindly, foot by foot. Behind them, outin the trail, came a ponderous crash, and, then an appalling explosionof squeals, screams, grunts and roars. The next instant the rigidstems gave way suddenly before them, and they fell forward, with astartled cry from the girl, into a deep and sunless water. 

They came up, spluttering and choking; but as soon as she could catchbreath the girl laughed, whereupon the grimness of Grôm's facerelaxed. The water was a deep creek, perfectly overshadowed and hiddenby the rank growth along its banks. But just opposite was the treewhose refuge they had been trying to gain. They swam across inhalf-a-dozen strokes, and drew themselves ashore, and shook themselveslike a pair of retrievers. Through all the flight, the fierce effortamong the grass-stems, and the unexpected ducking, they had kepttenacious hold of every one of their treasures. But--their fire wasout! The brand was black; the precious tube, with the seeds of firelurking at its heart, was drenched, saturated and lifeless. 

For a moment or two Grôm looked into the girl's eyes steadily, conveying to her without a word the whole tremendous significance oftheir loss. The girl responded, after a second's dismay, with a lookof trust and adoration which brought a rush of warmth to Grôm's heart. He smiled proudly, and shook his club as if to reassure himself. Then, climbing hurriedly into the tree, they stared back over the plumedtops of the grasses. 

The sight that met their eyes was not one for weak nerves. The spot inthe grass which they had just escaped from was a shambles. Theforemost of the panic-stricken pig-tapirs, met by the charge of therhinoceros, had been ripped and split by the rooting of his doublehorn, and hurled to either side as if by some titanic plough. A couplemore had been trampled down and crushed before his charge was stayedby the irresistible pressure of the surging, squealing mass. 

There he had stood fast, like a jagged promontory in the surges, tossing his mighty head and thrusting hideously, while the rest of theherd passed on, either scrambling clean over him or breaking down thecanes and pouring around on either side. Of those that passed over himabout one in every three or four got ripped by the tossing horn, andwent staggering forward a few paces, only to fall and be trodden outby their fellows. Close behind the last of the squealing fugitivescame the cause of their panic--two immense black lions, who hadapparently been playing with their prey like cats. 

When they came face to face with the rhinoceros where he stood amonghis victims, shaking the blood from horn and head and shoulder, theystopped abruptly. Together, perhaps, they would have been a match forhim. But theirs was a far higher intelligence than his. They knew thealmost impenetrable toughness of his hide, his Berserk rage, hisimperviousness to reasonable fear; and they had no care to engagethemselves without cause in so uncertain and unprofitable a combat. 

With a roar that rolled in thunder over the plain and seemed to setthe very tree-tops quivering, they leaped lazily aside and went off inenormous bounds through the grass, circling about as if to intercept, in sheer wantonness of slaughter, the remnants of the fleeing herd. Atthe sight Grôm frowned anxiously, thinking how helpless he and thegirl would be against such foes, now that they no longer had theShining One to protect them. 

Squealing to split the ears, the pig-tapirs came galloping past thetree, making for a piece of water some furlongs further on, wheredoubtless they hoped to evade both the lion and the rhinoceros. Butthey had yet another adversary to reckon with. 

Just past the tree, at a thicket of immense scarlet poinsettias, thetrail curved sharply. From behind the poinsettias arose a giganticshape unlike anything that Grôm had ever dreamed of. And he knew thatthe maker of the mysterious trail and those tremendous footprints wasbefore him. 

With a trumpeting bray of indignation the monster sat upright onhind-quarters far more ponderous than those of a mammoth. Its tail, asthick at the base as the body of a bear, helped to support it, whileits clumsy frame towered to a height of eighteen or twenty feet. Itshind legs were very short, thick like tree-trunks, grotesquely bowed;and its thighs like buttresses. Its fore legs were more arms thanlegs, of startling length and massive strength, draped in long, stiffhair, and terminated by colossal hands with immense hooked claws forfingers. The whole body was clothed with rusty hair of an amazingcoarseness, like matting fiber. The vast head, flat on top andprolonged to a snout that was almost a proboscis, had the look ofbeing deformed by reason of its fantastically exaggerated jowl, orlower jaw. This terrifying monster thrust out a narrow pink tongue, some three or four feet in length, stooped and turned, and gave ahurried look at something crouching behind its mighty thighs. 

"Its baby!" muttered the girl, with a little indrawn breath ofsympathy. 

Then the strange being sat up again to meet and ward off the rush ofthe maddened pig-tapirs. 

For a moment it beat off the assault, seizing the frantic beasts andhurling them this way and that as if they had been so many rabbits. Then it was completely surrounded by the reeking squealing bleedinghorde, which paid no more personal attention to it than if it had beena mass of rock. They rolled over the little one, unheeding, and trodit flat. Its death cry split the air; and at that sound the motherseemed to sink down into her haunches. In her agony of rage and griefshe literally tore some of her assailants in halves, throwing theawful fragments impatiently from her in order to lose no time inseizing a new victim. A few seconds more and the rush was past; andpresently the mad rout was hurling itself with a tremendous splashinginto the water. The monster looked around for more victims--and wasjust in time to see the hideous vision of the rhinoceros charging downupon her. Triumphant from the encounter with the lions, he rushed backto slake his still unsatisfied fury on the pig-tapirs. At any othertime he would have given such an antagonist as the colossalmegatherium a wide berth; but just now he was in one of his madnesses. His furious little swinish eyes blinking through the blood whichdripped over them, he hurled himself straight onward. His horn wasplunged into the monster's paunch; but at the same time one of thosegigantic armed hands fell irresistibly on his neck, shattering thevertebræ through all their deep protection of hide and muscle. Hecollapsed with an explosive grunt; and the giant hands tossed himaside. 

It was a frightful wound which the monster had received, but for a fewmoments she paid no attention to it, being occupied in licking thetrampled body of her young one with that amazing tongue of hers. Atlength, apparently convinced that the little one was quite dead, shebrayed again piteously, dropping forward upon all fours, and made offslowly down the trail, walking with grotesque awkwardness on the sidesof her feet. For two or three hundred yards she kept on, drawing awake of crimson behind her; and then, apparently exhausted by herwound, she turned off among the canes, and lay down, close beside thetrail, but effectively screened from it. 

From their place in the tree Grôm and the girl had followedbreathlessly these astounding encounters. At last Grôm spoke:

"This is a country of very great beasts, " he remarked, with the air ofone announcing a discovery. As A-ya showed no inclination whatever todissent from this statement, he presently went on to his conclusion, leaving her to infer his minor premise. 

"We must go back and recover the Shining One. It is not well for us togo on without him. "

"Yes, " agreed the girl eagerly. For all her courage and passionatetrust in her man, the sight of those black lions bounding over thetops of the towering grasses had somewhat shaken her nerve. She fearedno beasts but the swiftest, and those which might leap into the lowerbranches of the trees. "Yes!" she repeated. "Let us go back for theShining One, lest he be angry at us for having put him in the water. "

"But for yet a day more we will stay here in this tree, and rest andsleep in safety, " continued Grôm, "that we may travel the moreswiftly, till we get beyond the grasses. "

Then, climbing higher into the tree, he proceeded to build a platformand roof of interlaced branches for their temporary home. In this taskthe girl did not help him, because of the great muscular strengthwhich it required. She lay in a crotch, her hairy but long and shapelylegs coiled under her like a leopard's, now gazing at her man withardent eyes, now staring out apprehensively across the sun-drenched, perilous landscape. 

Suddenly she gave a cry of amazement, and pointed excitedly down thetrail. Beyond the water wherein the pig-tapirs had found refuge, beyond the lurking-place of the wounded megatherium, came three men, running desperately. Shading his eyes, Grôm made out that they werenearly exhausted. They were clearly men of the type of his own tribe, light-skinned and well shaped; and the leader, who carried a longclub, was a man of stature equal to his own. Grôm's sympathies wentout to them, and his impulse was to hasten to their assistance. Glancing further along the trail to learn the cause of their headlongflight, he saw two black lions in pursuit, probably the same two whichhad been driving the pig-tapirs a couple of hours earlier. They werecoming on at such a pace that Grôm feared the weary fugitives would beovertaken before they could reach the tree of refuge. Instinctively hestarted to climb down. But, his eyes falling upon the girl, heremembered that he had no right to enter upon a venture so utterlyhopeless while he had her to take care of. His eager clutch upon hisspear relaxed. 

"They are spent. They'll never get here!" he muttered anxiously. 

"No!" said A-ya, with blank unconcern. "The lions will get them. It'sMawg, and his two cousins. "

Grôm growled an exclamation of astonishment. The girl's eyes--or herintuitions--were keener than his. But he saw at a second glance thatshe was right. 

At this moment Mawg, running a few paces in advance by reason of hissuperior speed and stamina, passed the spot where the woundedmegatherium lay hidden. The monster lifted her dreadful head. The nextsecond the other two arrived, running elbow to elbow, with droopedshoulders of exhaustion. Through the screen of canes a gigantic handshot out above their heads and came down upon them, crushing the twotogether. They had not time for outcry; but it was clear that somesound caught the leader's ears, for he glanced back over his shoulder. He was near enough now for the keen-eyed watchers in the tree to seehis face change with horror. He ran on without a pause, but now withfresh speed, as if the sight had shocked him into new vigor. Seeingthat there was, after all, a good prospect of his reaching the tree intime, Grôm swung down to be ready to help him up. As he did so he sawthe two lions approach the hiding-place of the monster. 

The vast, clawed hand still lay there on the two crushed bodies in themiddle of the trail. The lions saw it, and they checked themselves ata safe distance. They knew that just behind the grass-screen lurkedanother such shaggy and monstrous member, waiting to rend them as theywould rend an antelope. They shrank, and drew back, snarling angrily. It is possible they feared lest the screen on either side of the trailmight conceal more than one of the monsters; for they sprang far asideas if to make a wide circuit of the perilous spot. 

"There's plenty of time!" muttered Grôm, and dropped upon his feet inthe middle of the trail. The girl came in mad haste after him, but athis sharp command "Stay there!" she contented herself with slippingout upon the lowest branch, just over his head, and holding her spearready. 

"Kill him!" she cried. But Grôm seemed not to hear. 

Staggering, and half blind with exhaustion Mawg was within twentypaces before he noticed who was confronting him. Then his dull eyesblazed. With a snarl of fury he hurled his club straight at Grôm'sface, missing him only by a hand's-breadth. But the effort, and thedisappointment at finding himself thus balked, as he imagined, on thevery threshold of escape, seemed to finish him. He stumbled on withgroping hands outstretched, and fell just at Grôm's feet. 

Grôm hesitated, wondering how he could get this inert weight up intothe tree. The girl did not understand his hesitation. 

"Kill him!" she hissed, leaning down eagerly from her branchoverhead. 

"No, he's a great warrior, and the tribe needs him, " answered Grôm, stooping to shake the prostrate form. 

Mawg stirred, beginning to recover. Grôm shook him again. 

"Up into the tree, quick!" he ordered in a loud, sharp voice. "Thelions are coming. "

Mawg roused himself, sat up, and stared with a look of bewildermentchanging swiftly into hate. 

"Up!" shouted Grôm again. "The tree. They're coming!"

At this the fellow growled, but sprang up as if he had been jabbedwith a spear, and clambered into the tree as nimbly as a monkey. Grômfollowed, quickly but coolly. A-ya, who had waited with her eyeswatchfully on Mawg, stepped close to Grôm's side; and all three swungupwards into the higher branches as the two lions arrived beneath. 

Glaring up into the tree with shrewd, malevolent eyes, the greatbeasts realized that, for the present at least, the tree man-creatureswere quite out of reach. Lashing their tufted tails in disappointment, they turned aside to sniff, in surly scorn, at the dead, mountainoushulk of the rhinoceros, which lay with one ponderous foot stuck up inthe air as if in clumsy protest at Fate. Comprehending readily themanner of its death, they came back and lay down under the tree, andfell to gnawing lazily at the body of one of the pig-tapirs which themegatherium had torn in two. They had the air of intending to staysome time, so Grôm presently turned his attention to his rescuedrival. 

Mawg was sitting on the next branch, a good spear's length distant, and glowering at A-ya's lithe shapeliness with eyes of savage greed. Grôm knit his brows, and significantly passed an arm about the girl'sshoulders. Mawg shifted his attention to him. 

"What do you want of me?" he demanded, in a thick, guttural voice. 

"I thought you ran as if you did not want the lions to eat you, "answered Grôm. 

Mawg stared with a stupid brutality and incomprehension; and the eyesof the two men, meeting fairly, seemed to lock in a duel ofpersonalities. 

They presented a significant contrast. Both, physically, superbspecimens of their race--the highest then evolved upon the youthfulearth--the elder man, in his ample forehead and calm, reasoning eyes, displayed all the promise of the future; while the youth, low skulledand with his dull but pugnacious eyes set under enormous bony brows, suggested the mere brute from which the race had mounted. His hair wasshorter and coarser than Grôm's, and foully matted; and his neck wasset very far forward between his powerful but lumpy shoulders. Thecolor of his coarse and furrowed skin was so dark as to make theweathered tan of Grôm and A-ya look white by contrast. 

In no way lacking courage, but failing in will and steadiness, in adozen seconds Mawg involuntarily shifted his gaze, and looked down atthe lions. 

"What do you want of me?" he demanded again, as if he had had noanswer before. 

"The tribe has too few warriors left. I will take you back to thetribe!" replied Grôm with authority. 

Mawg curled back his thick lips from his great yellow dog-teeth in asnarling laugh of incredulity. 

"You want to kill me!" said he, nodding his head. 

Grôm stared at him for a moment or two with a look of fatiguedcontempt, then tore off a substantial strip of dried flesh from thebundle hanging on the branch, and tossed it to him. The fellowsnatched it, and hid it behind him, being too hungry to refuse it, but too savage to eat it under his captor's eye. Grôm smiledslowly, and fell to playing with a heavy strand of A-ya's hairwhich had fallen over his arm. But to this caress the girl paid noattention. She was puzzled and outraged at Grôm's action in protectinghis rival. Her nostrils dilated, and a red spot glowed angrily undereach cheek-bone. 

Suddenly from down the trail came a noise of cracking grass-stems. Thetwo lions got up from their meal, and turned their heads inquiringlytoward the sound. The next moment they went stalking off the oppositeway with an air of haughty indignation, ignoring all the bodies of theslain pig-tapirs. When they had rounded the first turn in the trailthey leaped into the grass, and went bounding off in a straight linetoward a large patch of wood some miles distant. The woundedmegatherium was returning. 

Perhaps stung into restlessness by the anguish of that rending thrust, the monster came dragging herself back toward the tree, crawling onthe sides of her feet. Arriving at the scene of battle, she sniffedonce more at her mangled young one, and brayed piteously over it. Thenturning in an explosive fury upon the body of the rhinoceros, began totear it limb from limb as one might pull apart a roast pigeon. Whilethus occupied, she chanced to turn her eyes upon the tree, and caughtsight of the three figures looking down upon her. 

On the instant her rage was diverted to them. Braying like a steamsiren, she came under the tree, reared herself against it, flung hergiant arms about it, and strove to pull it down. The tree rocked as ifstruck by a tornado; and Mawg, who had been too slow to notice whatwas about to happen, gave a yell of horror as he barely saved himselffrom falling. The girl laughed, whereupon he shot her a menacing lookwhich so enraged her that she raised her spear as if to transfix him. 

But there was too much happening below for her attention to remain onMawg. Finding the tree quite too sturdy to be pulled down off-hand, the monster gripped the lowest main branch, a limb eight or ten inchesthrough, and with one wrench peeled it down like a stalk of celery. Her first effort, upon the main trunk, had set the blood once morepumping from her wound, but she paid no attention to it. Reaching tothe next great branch, she ripped that one down also, taking anothergreat strip from the main trunk. Grôm saw that her purpose obviouslywas to pull the tree to pieces bit by bit, in order to get at herintended victims. Mawg apparently saw this also, and it was too muchfor him. Gripping his strip of dried meat between his teeth, heslipped around the trunk till he was sheltered from the monster'ssight, dropped to a branch which stretched far over the water, ran outalong it nimbly as an ape, and dived. The monster, her eyes fixed uponthe two remaining in the tree, never noticed his escape. Mawg swam thecreek, thrust his way through the grass-stems, darted back to snatchup his club, shook it at Grôm, and, yelling an obscene taunt, racedoff to seek himself another retreat before nightfall. 

Neither Grôm nor A-ya had any heed to spare him at that moment. Themonster had just torn down a limb so huge that the main trunk wasalmost split in half by its loss. Grôm saw that unless he could stopthis process of destruction, in a few moments more the tree would beoverthrown. The monster was just rearing herself to clutch the nextgreat bough. Spear in hand, Grôm slipped down to meet her, and haltedon a branch just out of reach. The monster brayed vindictively, stretched to her full height, and then shot forth her tremendousmuscular red coil of tongue, thinking evidently to lick down herinsignificant adversary from his perch. She was within an inch ofsucceeding. Grôm just eluded the strange attack by stepping asidenimbly; and quick as thought A-ya's spear slashed the dreadful redtongue as it reached flickering after her lord's ankles. The nextmoment, seeing the monster's throat upstretched and unguarded, Grômdrove his spear full force, straight into the soft hollow of it. Theweapon sank into a depth of perhaps three feet, till the ragged flintlodged in the vertebræ of the monster's neck. Then the shaft waswrenched violently from his hand; and the monster, blowing blood andfoam from mouth and nostrils, fell with a crash among the litter ofgreat branches which she had pulled down. 

Grôm drew a deep breath of relief, and commended the girl for hertimely and effective stroke at that terrible tongue. Then he sethimself coolly to the task of completing their shelter for the night. As he wove leafy branches into the floor of the platform to make itsoft, she contemplated his work with satisfaction. Presently heremarked:

"I'm glad we are rid of that Mawg. "

"You should have killed him!" said the girl curtly. 

"But why?" demanded Grôm, in some surprise. In his eyes the fellow wasa valuable piece of property belonging to the tribe, a fightingasset. 

"He wants _me_!" answered the girl, meeting his eyes resentfully. 

Grôm let his eyes roam all over her--face, hair and form--and such alook of passionate admiration glowed in their steady depths that heranger faded, her own eyes dropped, and her breast gave a happy, incomprehensible flutter. She had never seen such a look in any man'sface before, or even dreamed of such a look as possible. 

"Of course, he wants you, " said Grôm, wondering, as he spoke, at thering of his own voice. "You are the fairest thing, and the mostdesirable, on earth. All men whose eyes come to rest on you must wantyou. But none shall have you, ever, for you are mine, and none shalltear you from me. "

And at that the girl forgot her anger, and forgave him for havingneglected to kill Mawg. 

That night sleep was impossible for them, though their lofty shelterwas comfortable and secure. A vast orange moon, near the full, illuminated the spacious landscape; and beneath the tree came all thegiant night-prowlers, gathering to the unparallelled banquet which theday had spread for them. Only the two black lions, perhaps alreadyglutted, did not come. Wolves, a small pack of self-disciplined wilddogs, a troop of hyenas, and several enormous leopards, howled, snarled and wrangled in knots over the widely scattered carcases, eachgroup watching its neighbors with suspicion and deadly animosity. 

A gigantic red bear came lumbering up, and all the lesser prowlersscattered discreetly but resentfully before him. He strode straight tothe chief place, under the rent, dishevelled tree, and fell to tearingat the mountainous corpse of the megatherium. He was undisturbed tilltwo saber-tooths arrived, their tawny coats spectral in the moonlight, their foot-long tusks giving their broad masks a dreadful grin. 

Before one saber-tooth the bear would have stood his groundscornfully; but before the two he thought it best to defer. Slowly, and with a thunderous grumbling, he moved over to the body of therhinoceros, pretending that he preferred it. The air was split andbattered with the clamor of raving voices. Other saber-tooths came, and then another bear. 

There were swift, sudden battles, as swiftly dropped becauseneither combatant wished to fight to a finish when there wasfeasting so abundant for all. And once a leopard, dodging the pawof a saber-tooth, sprang into the tree, only to fall back howlingfrom the spears thrust at him through the floor of Grôm's platform. 

Just before dawn the girl slept, while Grôm kept watch beside her lestanother leopard should fancy to explore their refuge. An hour later, when the first pallor was spreading, she awoke with a cry of fear, andclung to Grôm's arm, shuddering strongly. 

"But--what is it?" he asked, in a tender voice, stroking her heavymane. 

"I was afraid!" she answered, like a child. 

"What were you afraid of?" asked Grôm. 

"I was afraid of Mawg. I _am_ afraid of him!" she answered, sitting upand shaking the hair from her eyes, and staring out fearfully over thegray transparent plains. 

"Why should you fear Mawg?" demanded Grôm proudly. "Am not I your man?And am not I always with you? Many such mad brutes as Mawg could nottake you from me. "

"I know, " answered the girl, "that he and such as he would be asstraws in my lord's hands. But--even Grôm must sometimes sleep!"

Grôm laughed gently at her forebodings. 

"He must sleep now, indeed, for we have a long and perilous journeybefore us, " said he. Laying his great shaggy head in her lap, andstretching his limbs as far as the tiny platform would allow he wasasleep in two seconds. The girl, stooping forward till her rich hairshadowed the rugged, sleeping face, with its calm brows, pondereddeeply over his inexplicable forbearance toward his rival. Herinstincts all assured her that it was dangerous; but something elsewithin her, something which she strove in vain to grasp, suggested toher that in some way it was noble, and made her glad of it. Then, allat once, the first of the sunrise, flooding into the tree-top, bathedher face with a rosy glow, and wonderfully transfigured it. 

CHAPTER VI

THE BATTLE OF THE BRANDS

I

Now for two years had the remnants of the tribe been settled in theValley of Fire. They had prospered exceedingly. The caves wereswarming with strong children; for at the Chief's orders every warriorhad taken to himself either two or three wives, so that none of thewidows had been left unmated. Grôm alone remained with but one wife, although his position in the tribe, second only to that of Bawrhimself, would have entitled him to as many as he might choose. 

Singularly happy with the girl A-ya, Grôm had been unwilling toreceive other women into their little grotto, which branched off fromthe high arched entrance of the main cave. He might, however, haveyielded, from policy and for the sake of the tribe, to pressure fromthe Chief, but for a look of startled anguish which he had seen leapinto A-ya's eyes when he mentioned the matter to her. This hadsurprised him at the moment, but it had also thrilled him curiously. And as the girl made no objection to a step so absolutely inaccordance with the tribal customs, Grôm thought about it a good deal. A few days later he excused himself to the Chief, saying that otherwomen in his cave would be a nuisance, and would interfere with thosestudies of the Shining One which had proved so beneficial to thetribe. Bawr had accepted the excuse, though somewhat perplexed by it, and had accommodatingly taken the extra wives himself--a solutionwhich had seemed to meet with the unqualified approval of A-ya. 

The first winter in the Valley of Fire had been a wonderful one to thetribe, thanks to the fierce but beneficent element ever shining, dancing and whispering in its mysterious tongue before the cave doors. Bleak winds and driving, icy rains out of the north had no longer anypower to distress them. 

But when the storm was violent, with drenching and persistent rain, then it was found necessary to feed the fires before the cave-mouthslavishly with dry fuel from the stores which Grôm's forethought hadcaused to be accumulated under shelter. These contests between fireand rain were sagaciously represented by Bawr (who had by now to hisauthority as Chief added the subtle sanctions of High Priest) as thefight of the Shining One in protection of the tribe, his children. 

On more than one occasion of torrential downpour the struggle hadalmost seemed to hang for a while in doubt. But the Shining One lostno prestige, thereby, for always, down there across the valley-mouth, kept leaping and dancing those unquenchable flames of scarlet, amberand violet, fed by the volcanic gases from within the crevice, andutterly regardless of whatever floods the sky might loose upon them. This was evidence conclusive that the Shining One was master of thestorm, no less than of the monsters which fled so terror-strickenbefore him. 

In the early spring, the girl A-ya bore a child to Grôm; a big-limbed, vigorous boy, with shapely head and spacious brow. In this event, andin the mother's happiness about it (a happiness that seemed to therest of the women to savor of foolish extravagance), Grôm felt agladness which dignity forbade him to betray. 

But pondering over the little one with bent brows, and with deep eyesfull of visions, he conceived such an ambition as had perhaps neverbefore entered into the heart of man. It was that this child mightgrow up to achieve some wonderful thing, as he himself had done, forthe advancement of his people. Of this baby, child of the woman towardwhom he felt emotions so new and so profound, he had a premonitionthat new and incalculable things would come. 

One day Grôm was following the trail of a deer some distance up thevalley. Skilled hunter that he was, he could read in the trail thathis quarry was not far ahead, and also that it had not yet takenalarm. He followed cautiously, up the wind, noiseless as a leopard, his sagacious eyes taking note of every detail about him. 

Presently he came to a spot where the trail was broken. There was atwenty-foot gap to the next hoofprints, and these went off at rightangles to the direction which the quarry had hitherto been pursuing. Grôm halted abruptly, slipped behind a tree, crouched, and peeredabout him with the tense vigilance of a startled fox. He knew thatsomething had frightened the deer, and frightened it badly. Itbehooved him to find out what that something was. 

For some minutes he stood motionless as the trunk against which heleant, searching every bush and thicket with his keen gaze, andsniffing the air with expert nostrils. There was nothing perceptibleto explain that sudden fright of the deer. He was on the point ofslipping around the trunk to investigate from another angle. But stop!There on a patch of soil where some bear had been grubbing for tubershe detected a strange footprint. Instantly, he sank to the ground, andwormed his way over, silently as a snake, to examine it. 

It was a human footprint, but much larger than his own, or those ofhis tribe; and Grôm's beard, and the stiff hairs on the nape of hiscorded neck, bristled with hostility at the sight of it. 

The toes of this portentous print were immensely long and muscular, the heel protruded grotesquely far behind the arch of the foot, whichwas low and flat. The pressure was very marked along all the outeredge, as if the author of the print had walked on the outer sides ofhis feet. To Grôm, who was an adept in the signs of the trail, itneeded no second look to be informed that one of the Bow-legs had beenhere. And the trail was not five minutes old. 

Grôm slipped under the nearest bushes, and writhed forward withamazing speed in the direction indicated by the strange footprint, pausing every other second to look, sniff the air, and listen. Thetrail was as clear as daylight to him. Suddenly he heard voices, several of them, guttural and squealing, and stopped again as ifturned to stone. Then another voice, at which he started in amazement. It was Mawg's, speaking quietly and confidentially. Mawg, then, hadgone over to the Bow-legs! Grôm's forehead wrinkled. A-ya had beenright. He ought to have killed the traitor. He writhed himself into adense covert, and presently, over the broken brink of a vine-drapedledge, was able to command a view of the speakers. 

They were five in number, and grouped almost immediately below him. Four were of the Bow-legs, squat, huge in the shoulder, long-armed, flat-skulled, of a yellowish clay color, with protruding jaws, andgaping, pit-like, upturned nostrils to their wide, bridgeless noses. Grôm's own nose wrinkled in disgust as the sour taint of them breathedup to him. 

They were all armed with spears and stone-headed clubs, such as theirpeople had been unacquainted with up to the time of their attack uponthe Tribe of the Little Hills. It was apparent to Grôm that therenegade Mawg, who towered among them arrogantly, had been teachingthem what he knew of effective weapons. 

Having no remotest comprehension of the language of the Bow-legs--whichMawg was speaking with them--Grôm could get little clue to the drift oftheir talk. They gesticulated frequently toward the east, and thenagain toward the caves at the valley-mouth, so Grôm guessed readilyenough that they were planning something against his people. 

It was clear, also, that this was but a little scouting party whichthe renegade had led in to spy upon the weakness of the tribe. Thiswas as far as he could premise with any certainty. The obviousconclusion was that these spies would return to their own country, tolead back such an invasion as should blot the Children of the ShiningOne out of existence. 

Grôm was quick to realize that to listen any longer was to wasteinvaluable time. All that it was possible for him to learn, he hadlearned. Writhing softly back till he had gained what he considered asafe distance from the spies, he rose to his feet and ran, at firstnoiselessly, and crouching as he went, then at the top of that speedfor which he was famous in the tribe. Reaching the Caves, he laid thematter hurriedly before the Chief, and within five minutes they wereleading a dozen warriors up the trail. 

Besides their customary weapons, both Grôm and the Chief carriedfire-sticks, tubes of thick, green bark, tied round with a raw hide, filled with smouldering punk, and perforated with a number of holestoward the upper end. This was one of Grôm's inventions, of provedefficacy against saber-tooth and bear. By cramming a handful of dryfiber and twigs into the mouth of the tube, and then whirling itaround his head, he was able to obtain a sudden and most unexpectedburst of flame which no beast ever dared to face, and which neverfailed to compel the awe and wonder of his followers. 

Like shadows the little band went gliding in single file through thethickets and under the drooping branches, their passage marked only bythe occasional upspringing of a startled bird or the frightenedcrashing flight of some timorous beast surprised by their swift andnoiseless approach. Arriving near the hollow under the ledge, theysank flat and wormed their way forward like weasels till they hadgained the post of observation behind the vine-clad rock. 

But the strangers had vanished. An examination of their footprintsshowed that they had fled in haste; and to Grôm's chagrin it looked asif he had himself given them the alarm. The problem was solved in afew minutes by the discovery that Mawg--easily detected by his finerfootprints--had scaled the ledge and come upon the place where Grômhad lain hidden to watch them. Seeing that they were discovered, andthat their discoverer had evidently gone to arouse the tribe, they hadrealized that, the Bow-legs being slow runners, their only hope lay ininstant flight. From the direction which they had taken it was evidentthat they were fleeing back to their own country. 

The Chief ordered instant pursuit. To this Grôm demurred, not onlybecause the fugitives had obtained such a start--as was shown by thestate of the trail--but because he dreaded to leave the Caves so longunguarded. He foresaw the possibility of another band of invaderssurprising the Caves during the absence of this most efficientfighting force. But the Chief overruled him. 

For several hours was the pursuit kept up; and from the trail itappeared, not only that Mawg was leading his followers cleverly, butalso that the Bow-legs were making no mean speed. The pursuers werecome by now to near the head of the valley, a region with which theywere little familiar. It was a broken country and well fitted forambuscade, where a lesser force, well posted and driven to bay, mightwell secure a deadly advantage. The tribe was too weak to risk its fewfighting men in any uncertain contest; and the Chief, yielding slowlyto Grôm's arguments, was on the point of giving the order to turnback, when a harsh scream of terror from just ahead, beyond a shoulderof rock, brought the line to a halt. 

Waving their followers into concealment on either side of the trail, the Chief and Grôm stole forward and peered cautiously around theturn. 

Straight before them fell away a steep and rugged slope. Midway of thedescent, with his back to a rock, crouched one of the Bow-legs, battling frantically with his club to keep off the attack of a pair ofleopards. The man was kneeling upon one knee, with the other legtrailed awkwardly behind him. It seemed an altogether difficult anddisadvantageous position in which to do battle. 

"The fool!" said Bawr. "He doesn't know how to fight a leopard. "

"He's hurt. His leg is broken!" said Grôm. And straightway, a novelpurpose flashing into his far-seeing brain, he ran leaping down theslope to the rescue, waving his fire-stick to a blaze as he went. 

The Chief looked puzzled for a moment, wondering why the deliberateGrôm should trouble to do what it was plain the leopards would do forhim most effectually. But he dreaded the chance of an ambuscade. Shouting to the men behind to come on, he waved his own fire-stick toa blaze, and followed Grôm. 

One of the leopards had already succeeded in closing in upon thewounded Bow-leg; but at the sight of Grôm and the Chief leaping downupon them they sprang back snarling and scurried off among thethickets like frightened cats. The Bow-leg lifted wild eyes to learnthe meaning of his deliverance. But when he saw those two tall formsrushing at him with flame and smoke circling about their heads, hegave a groan and fell forward upon his face. 

Grôm stood over him, staring down upon the misshapen and bleeding formwith thoughtful eyes; while the Chief looked on, striving to fathomhis purpose. The warriors came up, shouting savage delight at havingat last got one of their dreaded enemies into their hands alive. Theywould have fallen upon him at once and torn him to pieces. But Grômwaved them back sternly. They growled with indignation, and one, sufficiently prominent in the tribal counsels to dare Grôm'sdispleasure, protested hotly against this favor to so venomous a foe. 

"I demand this fellow, Bawr, as my captive!" said Grôm. 

"It was you who took him, " answered the Chief. "He is yours. " He wasabout to add, "though I can't see what you want of him"; but it was apart of his policy never to seem in doubt or ignorance about anythingthat another might perhaps know. So, instead, he sternly told hisfollowers to obey the law of the tribe and respect Grôm's capture. Then Grôm stepped close beside him and said at his ear: "Many thingswhich we need to know will Bawr learn from this fellow presently, asto the dangers which are like to come upon us. "

At this the Chief, being ready of wit, comprehended Grôm's purpose;and, to the amazement of his followers, he looked down upon thehideous prisoner with a smile of satisfaction. 

"Well have I called you the Chief's Right Hand, " he answered. "I shallalso have to call you the Chief's Wisdom, for in saving this fellow'slife you have shown more forethought than I. "

The captive's wounds having been dressed with astringent herbs, andhis broken leg put into splints in accordance with the rude but notineffective surgery of the time, he was placed on a rough litter ofinterlaced branches and carried back by the reluctant warriors to theCaves. 

None of the warriors were advanced enough to have understood thepolicy of their leaders, so no effort was made by either the Chief orGrôm to explain it. The Chief, doubly secure in his dominance byreason of Grôm's loyal support, cared little whether his followerswere content or not, and he took no heed of their ill-humor so long asthey did not allow it to become articulate. 

But when, after an hour's sullen tramping, they suddenly grew merry attheir task, and fell to marching with a child-like cheer under theirrepulsive and groaning burden, he was surprised, and made inquiry asto the reason for this sudden complaisance. It turned out that one ofthe warriors, accounted more discerning than his fellows, hadsuggested that the captive was to be nursed back to health in orderthat he might be made an acceptable sacrifice to the Shining One. Asthis notion seemed to meet with such hearty approval, the wise Chiefdid not think it worth while to cast any doubt upon it. In fact, as hethought, such a solution might very well arrive, in the end, in caseGrôm's design should fail to come up to his expectations. 

To the presence of the hideous and repulsive stranger in her dwelling, A-ya, as was natural, raised warm objection. But when Grôm hadexplained his purpose to her, and the imminence of the peril thatthreatened, she yielded readily enough, the dread of Mawg being yetvivid in her imagination. She lent herself cheerfully to the duty ofcaring for the captive's wounds and of helping Grôm to teach him thesimple speech of the tribe. 

As for the captive, for some days he was possessed by a moroseanticipation of being brained at any moment--an anticipation, however, which did not seem to interfere with his appetite. He would clutcheagerly all the food offered him, and crouch, huddled over it, withhis face to the rock-wall, while he devoured it with frantic haste andbestial noises. But as he found himself treated with invariablekindness, he began to develop an anxious gratitude and docility. OnA-ya's tall form his little round eyes, shy and fierce at the sametime, came to rest with an adoring awe. The smell of him beingextremely offensive to all this cleanly tribe, and especially to A-yaand Grôm, who were more fastidious than their fellows, A-ya had takenadvantage of her office as priestess of the Shining One to establish alittle fire within the precincts of her own dwelling, and by thejudicious use of aromatic barks upon the blaze she was able to scentthe place to her taste. And the Bow-leg, seeing her mastery of themysterious and dreadful scarlet tongues which licked upwards from thehollow on their rocky pedestal, regarded her less as a woman than as agoddess--a being who, for her own unknown reasons, chose to bebeneficent toward him, but who plainly could become destructive if heshould in any way transgress. Toward Grôm--who regarded him altogetherimpersonally as a means to an end, a pawn to be played prudently in agame of vast import--his attitude was that of the submitted slave, hisfate lying in the hollow of his master's hand. Toward the rest of thetribe--who, till their curiosity was sated, kept crowding in to stareand jeer and curse--he displayed the savage fear and hate of a lynx atbay. 

But the babe on A-ya's arm seemed to him something peculiarlyprecious. It was not only the son of Grôm, his grave and distantmaster, but also of that wonderful, beautiful, enigmatic deity, hismistress, the fashioner and controller of the flames. The adorationwhich soon grew up in his heart for A-ya's beauty, but which his aweof her did not suffer him even to realize to himself, was turned uponthe babe, and speedily took the form of a passionate and dog-likedevotion. A-ya, with her mother instinct, was quick to understandthis, and also to realize the possible value to her child of such adevotion, in some future emergency. Moreover, it softened her hearttoward the hideous captive, so that she busied herself not only tohelp Grôm teach him their language, but also to reform his manners andmake him somewhat less unpleasant an associate. His wounds soonhealed, thanks to the vitality of his youthful stock; and the bones ofthe broken leg soon knit themselves securely. But Grôm's surgeryhaving been hasty and something less than exact, the leg remained socrooked that its owner could do no more than hobble about with alaborious, dragging gait. It being obvious that he could not run away, there was no guard set upon him. 

But it soon became equally obvious that nothing would induce him toremove himself from the neighborhood of A-ya's baby. He was like agigantic watchdog squatting at Grôm's doorway, chained to it by linksstronger than any that hands could fashion. And those of the tribe whohad been hoping to do honor to the Shining One, as well as to thespirits of their slain kinsmen back in the barrow on the windy hills, by a great and bloody sacrifice, began to realize with discontent thattheir hopes were like enough to be disappointed. 

II

The captive said his name was Ook-ootsk--a clicking guttural whichnone but A-ya was able to master. When he had learned to make himselfunderstood, he proved eager to repay Grôm's protection by giving allthe information that he possessed. Simple-minded, but with much of achild's shrewdness, he quickly came to regard himself as of someimportance when both the Chief and Grôm would spend hours ininterrogating him. His own people he repudiated with bitterness, because, when he had fallen among the rocks and shattered his leg, hisparty had refused to burden their flight by helping him. It became hispride to identify himself with the interests of his master, and tocall himself the slave of his master's baby. 

The information which he was able to give was such as to cause theChief and Grôm the most profound disquietude. It appeared that theBow-legs, having gradually recovered from the panic of their appallingdefeat in the Pass of the Little Hills, had made up their minds thatthe disaster must be avenged. But no longer did they hold theiropponents cheap on account of their scanty numbers. They realized thatif they would hope to succeed in their next attack they must organize, and prepare themselves by learning how to employ their forces better. To this end, therefore, when Mawg and his fellow-renegades fell intotheir hands, instead of tearing them to pieces in bestial sport, theyhad spared them, and made much of them, and set themselves diligentlyto learn all that the strangers could teach. And Mawg, seeing here hisopportunity both for vengeance on Grôm and for the gratification ofthat mad passion for A-ya which had so long obsessed him, had goneabout the business with shrewd foresight and a convincing zeal. 

It was apparent from the accounts which Ook-ootsk was able to givethat the invasion would take place as soon as possible after theirhordes were adequately armed with the new weapons. This, saidOok-ootsk, would be soon after the dry season had set in. In any case, he said, the hordes were bound to wait for the dry season, because theway from their country to the Valley of Fire lay through a region ofswamps which became impassable for any large body of migrants duringthe month of rains. 

As the dry season was already close upon them, Bawr and Grôm now setthemselves feverishly to the arrangement of their defenses. Countingthe older boys who had grown into sizable youths since the last greatbattle and all the able-bodied women and girls, they could muster nomore than about six score of actual combatants. They knew that defeatwould mean nothing less than instant annihilation for the tribe, andfor the women a foul captivity and a loathsome mating. But they knewalso that a mere successful defense would avail them only for themoment. Unless they could inflict upon the invaders such a defeat aswould amount to a paralyzing catastrophe, they would soon be worn downby mere force of numbers, or starved to death in their caves. It wasnot only for defense, therefore, but for wholesale attack--the attackof six score upon as many thousand--that Bawr planned his strategy andGrôm wove unheard-of devices. 

Of the two great caves occupied by the tribe one was now abandoned, asnot lending itself easily to defense. To Bawr's battle-trained eyes itrevealed itself as rather a trap than a refuge, because from theheights behind it an enemy could roll down rocks enough to effectivelyblock its mouth. But the cliff in which the other cave was hollowedwas practically inaccessible, and hung beetling far over theentrance. 

Into this natural fortress the tribe--with an infinite deal ofgrumbling--was removed. Store of roots and dried flesh was gatheredwithin; and every one was set to the collection of dry and half-dry fuel. The light stuff, with an immense number of short, highly-inflammablefaggots, was piled inside the doorway where no rain could reach it. Andthe heavy wood was stacked outside, to right and left, in such a fashionas to form practical ramparts for the innermost line of defense. 

Directly in front of the cave spread a small fan-shaped plateauseveral hundred square yards in area. On the right a narrow path, wideenough for but one wayfarer at a time, descended between perpendicularboulders to the second cave. On the left the plateau was bordered bybroken ground, a jumble of serrated rocks, to be traversed only withdifficulty. In front there was a steep but shallow dip, from which theland sloped gently up the valley, clothed with high bush and deepthickets intersected with innumerable narrow trails. 

Directly in front of the cave, and about the center of the plateau, burned always, night and day, the sacred fire, tended in turn by themembers of the little band appointed to this distinguished service bythe Chief. Under the Chief's direction the whole of the plateau wasnow cleared of underbrush and grass, and then along its brink was laida chain of small fires, some ten or twelve feet apart, and all readyfor lighting. 

Meanwhile, Grôm was busy preparing the device on which, according tohis plan of campaign, the ultimate issue was to hang. For days thetribe was kept on the stretch collecting dry and leafy brushwood fromthe other side of the valley, and bundles of dead grass from the richsavannahs beyond the valley-mouth, on the other side of the dancingflames. All this inflammable stuff Grôm distributed lavishly throughthe thickets before the plateau, to a distance of nearly a mile up theslope, till the whole space was in reality one vast bonfire laid readyfor the torch. 

While these preparations were being rushed--somewhat to the perplexityof the tribe, who could not fathom the tactics of stuffing thelandscape with rubbish--Bawr was keeping a little band of scouts onguard at the far-off head of the valley. They were chosen from theswift runners of the tribe; and Bawr, who was a far-seeing general, had them relieved twice in twenty-four hours, that they might not growweary and fail in vigilance. 

When all was ready came a time of trying suspense. As day after dayrolled by without event, cloudless and hot, the country became as dryas tinder; and the tribe, seeing that nothing unusual happened, beganto doubt or to forget the danger that hung over them. There weremurmurs over the strain of ceaseless watching, murmurs which Bawrsuppressed with small ceremony. But the lame Ook-ootsk, squattingmisshapen in Grôm's doorway with A-ya's baby in his ape-like arms grewmore and more anxious. As he conveyed to Grôm, the longer the delaythe greater the force which was being gathered for the assault. 

Having no inkling of Grôm's larger designs, he looked with distrust onthe little heaps of wood that were to be fires along the edge of theplateau, and wished them to be piled much bigger, intimating that hispeople, though they would be terribly afraid of the Shining One, wouldbe forced on from behind by sheer numbers and would trample the smallfires out. The confidence of the Chief and Grôm, and of A-ya as well, in the face of the awful peril which hung over them, filled him withamazement. 

Then, at last, one evening just in the dying flush of the sunset, camethe scouts, running breathlessly, and one with a ragged spear-wound inhis shoulder. Their eyes were wide as they told of the countlessmyriads of the Bow-legs who were pouring into the head of the valley, led by Mawg and a gigantic black-faced chief as tall as Bawr himself. 

"Are they as many, " asked Grôm, "as they who came against us in theLittle Hills?"

But the panting men threw up their hands. 

"As a swarm of locusts to a flock of starlings, " they replied. 

To their astonishment the Chief smiled with grim satisfaction at thisappalling news. 

"It is well, " said he. Mounting a rock by the cave-door, he gazed upthe valley, striving to make out the vanguard of the approachinghordes; while Grôm, marshalling the servitors of the fire, stationedthem by the range of piles, ready to set light to them on the givenword. 

It was nearly an hour--so swift had been the terror of the scouts--beforea low, terrible sound of crashings and mutterings announced that the hordeswere drawing near. It was now twilight, with the first stars appearing ina pallid violet sky; and up the valley could be discerned an obscurelyrolling confusion among the thickets. Bawr gave orders, rapid and concise;and the combatants lined out in a double rank along the front of theplateau some three or four paces behind the piles of wood. 

They were armed with stone-headed clubs, large or small, according topersonal taste, and each carried at least three flint-tipped spears. At the head of the narrow path leading up from the lower cave werestationed half a dozen women, similarly armed. Bawr had chosen thesewomen because each of them had one or more young children in the cavebehind her; and he knew that no adventurous foe would get up that pathalive. But A-ya was not among these six wild mothers, for her placewas at the service of the fires. 

The ominous roar and that obscure confusion rolled swiftly nearer, andBawr, with a swing of his huge club, sprang down from his post ofobservation and strode to the front. Grôm shouted an order, and lightwas set to all the crescent of fires. They flared up briskly; and atthe same time the big central fire, which had been allowed to sink toa heap of glowing coals, was heaped with dry stuff which sent up aninstant column of flame. The sudden wide illumination, shed somehundreds of yards up the valley, revealed the front ranks of theBow-legs swarming in the brush, their hideous yellow faces, gapingnostrils and pig-like eyes all turned up in awe towards the glare. 

The advance of the front ranks came to an instant halt, and the lowmuttering rose to a chorus of harsh cries. Then the tall figure ofMawg sprang to the front, followed, after a moment of wonderinghesitation, by that of the head chief of the hordes, a massivecreature of the true Bow-leg type, but as tall as Bawr himself, and incolor almost black. This giant and Mawg, refusing to be awed by thetremendous phenomenon of the fire, went leaping along the lines oftheir followers, urging them forward, and pointing out that theirenemies stood close beside the flames and took no hurt. 

On the front ranks themselves this reasoning seemed, at first, toproduce little effect. But to those just behind it appeared morecogent, seconded as it was by a consuming curiosity. Moreover, themasses in the rear were rolling down, and their pressure presentlybecame irresistible. All at once the front ranks realized that theyhad no choice in the matter. They sagged forward, surged obstinatelyback again, then gave like a bursting dam and poured, yelling andleaping, straight onward toward the crescent of fires. 

As soon as the rush was fairly begun, both Mawg and the Black Chiefcleverly extricated themselves from it, running aside to the higher, broken ground at the left of the plateau whence they could see anddirect the attack. It was plain enough that they accounted the frontranks doomed, and were depending on sheer weight of numbers for theinevitable victory. 

Standing grim, silent, immovable between their fires, the Chief andGrôm awaited the dreadful onset. In all the tribe not a voice wasraised, not a fighter, man or woman, quailed. But many hearts stoodstill, for it looked as if that living flood could never be stayed. Presently from all along its front came a cloud of spears. But theyfell short, not more than half a dozen reaching the edge of theplateau. In instant response came a deep-chested shout from Bawr, followed by a discharge of spears from behind the line of fire. 

These spears, driven with free arm and practised skill, went cleanhome in the packed ranks of the foe, but they caused no more than asecond's wavering, as the dead went down and their fellows crowded onstraight over them. A second volley from the grimly silent fighters onthe plateau had somewhat more effect. Driven low, and at shorterrange, every jagged flint-point found its mark, and the screamingvictims hampered those behind. But after a moment the mad flood cameon again, till it was within some thirty paces of the edge of theplateau. 

Then came a long shout from Grôm, a signal which had been anxiouslyawaited by the front line of his fighters. Each fire had been laid, onthe inner side, with dry faggots of a resinous wood which not onlyblazed freely but held the flame tenaciously. These faggots had beenplaced with only their tips in the fire. Seizing them by theirunlighted ends, the warriors hurled them, blazing, full into thegaping faces before them. 

The brutal, gaping faces screeched with pain and terror, and the wholefront rank, beating frantically at the strange missiles, wheeled aboutand clawed at the rank behind, battling to force its way through. Butthe rolling masses were not to be denied. After a brief, terriblestruggle, the would-be fugitives were borne down and troddenunderfoot. The new-comers were greeted with a second discharge of theblazing brands, and the dreadful scene repeated itself. But now therewas a difference. For many of the assailants, realizing that there wasno chance of retreat, came straight on, heedless of brand or spear, with the deadly, uncalculating fury of a beast at bay. 

For some seconds, under the specific directions of the Chief on theright center and of Grôm far to the left, many of the blazing brandshad been thrown, not into the faces of the front rank, but far overtheir heads, to fall among the tinder-dry brushwood. Long tongues offlame leaped up at once, here, there, everywhere, curling and lickingsavagely. Screeches of horror arose, which brought all the hordes to ahalt as far back as they could be heard. A light wind was blowing upthe valley, and almost at once the scattered flames, gathering volume, came together with a roar. The hordes, smitten with the blindestmadness of panic, turned to flee, springing upon and tearing at eachother in the desperate struggle to escape. 

Shouting triumph and derision, the defenders bounded forward, downover the edge of the plateau, and fell upon the huddled ranks beforethem. But these, with all escape cut off, and far outnumbering theirexultant adversaries, now fought like rats in a pit. And the men ofthe caves found themselves locked in a struggle to the death just whenthey had thought the fight was done. 

A-ya, no longer needed at the fires, was just about to follow Grômdown into the thick of the reeking battle, when a scream from thecave-mouth made her whip round. She was just in time to see Ook-ootskhurl his spear at the tall figure of Mawg, leaping down upon him fromthe broken slope on the left. A half score of the Bow-legs werefollowing hard upon Mawg's heels. With a scream of warning to Grôm sherushed back to the cave. But Grôm did not hear her. He had been pulleddown, struck senseless and buried under a writhing heap of foes. 

Her long hair streaming behind her, her eyes like those of a tigressprotecting her cubs, A-ya darted to the cave-door. But she did notreach it. Just outside the threshold a club descended upon her head, and she dropped. Instantly she was pounced upon, and bound. A momentlater three Bow-legs, followed by Mawg, streaming with blood, camerunning out of the cave. Mawg swung the limp form across his shoulderwith a grin of satisfaction, and the party beat a hurried retreat upthe slopes. 

In a few minutes that last death-grapple along the front of theplateau came to an end, and Bawr, leaving nearly a third of hisfollowers slain with the slain Bow-legs, led the exultant survivorsback to the cave. It had been a costly victory for the Children ofthe Shining One; but for the invaders it was little less thanannihilation. The flames were raging for a mile up the valley, wherever they were not choked by the piles and windrows of the deador dying Bow-legs. The lurid night was shaken with the incessantrising and falling chorus of shrieks, and far off under the glarerolled that awful receding wave of fugitives, with the flamesleaping upon them and slaying them as they fled. Leaning upon hisclub and gazing thoughtfully across the scene of incredibledestruction, Bawr told himself that never again, so long as thememory of this night survived, would the Bow-legs dare to comeagainst his people. 

Then wild lamentation from the women drew the Chief into the cave. Here he found that half the little ones had been killed in that swiftincursion of Mawg, and that nearly all the old men and women had beenslaughtered in defending their charges. Across Grôm's doorway, crouching on his face and with his great teeth buried in the throat ofa dead Bow-leg, lay the lame captive, Ook-ootsk. Seeing that he stillbreathed, and marking the fury with which he had fought in defense oftheir little ones, the warriors lifted him aside gently. Beneath him, and safely guarded in the crook of his shaggy arm, they found Grôm'sbaby, without a hurt. The women defending the head of the path on theright having seen the rape of A-ya, Bawr handed the babe to one of hisown wives to cherish. 

Then search was made for Grôm. At first the Chief imagined that he hadfollowed the captors of A-ya, in a desperate hope of effecting herrescue alone. But they found him under a heap of dead, so nearly deadhimself that they despaired of him. Realizing that it was he who hadsaved the tribe, they began over him that great keening lamentationhitherto reserved strictly for the funeral of the supreme Chiefhimself. But Bawr, his massive features furrowed with solicitude, stopped them, vowing that Grôm should not die. And lifting the hero inhis arms he bore him into the cave. 

Grôm's wounds proved to be deep, but not fatal to one of theseclean-blooded sons of the open and the wind. It was some days beforeit was clearly borne in upon him that A-ya had been carried off aliveby the Bow-legs. Then, with a great cry, he sprang to his feet. Theblood spouted afresh from his wounds, and he fell back in a swoon. When he came to himself again, for days he would speak to no one, andit looked as if he would die, not of his wounds so much as of theinsufficient will to live. But a chance word of the captive Ook-ootsk, who was being nursed back to life beside him, reminded him that therewas vengeance to be lived for, and he roused himself a little. ThenBawr, ever subtle in the reading of his people's hearts, suggested tohim that even such a feat as the rescue of the girl A-ya might not beimpossible to the subjugator of the fire and the slayer of a wholepeople. 

And from that moment Grôm began climbing steadily back to life. 

CHAPTER VII

THE RESCUE OF A-YA

The clay-colored, ape-like, bow-legged men squatted in council. 

It was not long, as time went in the long, slow morning of theworld--perhaps a half-score thousand years or so--since theirancestors, in the pride of their dawning intelligence, had swung downfrom their tree-tops, to walk upright on the solid earth and challengethe supremacy of the hunting beasts. Their arms were still of anunhuman and ungainly length, their short powerful legs were still soheavily bowed that they had no great speed in running; and they stillhad their homes high among the branches, where they could sleep securefrom surprise. They were still tree dwellers; but they were men, intent upon asserting their lordship over all the other dwellers uponearth's surface. 

They were not beautiful to look upon. Their squat, powerful forms, varying in color from a dingy yellow-brown to blackish mud-color, werecovered unevenly with a thin growth of dark hairs. On thigh andshoulder, down the backbone, and on the outer side of the longforearm, this growth was heavier and longer, forming a sort ofirregular thatch; while the hair of their heads was jet black, andmatted into a filthy tangle with grease and clay. Their faces werebroad and flat, with powerful protruding jaws, low and very recedingforeheads, and wide noses which seemed to have been punched in at thebridge so that the flaring red nostrils turned upwards hideously. 

It was but a battered and crestfallen remnant of the tribe which nowtook counsel over their diminished fortunes. In an irregularhalf-circle they squatted, pawing gingerly at their wounds orscratching themselves uncouthly, while their apish women loitered inchattering groups outside the circle, or crouched in the branches ofthe neighboring trees. Those who were perched in the trees mostly heldbabies at their breasts, and were therefore instinctively distrustfulof the dangerous ground-levels. Here and there on the outskirts of thecrowd, either squatting on hillocks or clinging in a tree-top, wary-eyed old women kept watch against surprise; though there were fewamong either beasts or men who would be likely to venture an attackupon the ferocious tribe of the Bow-legs. 

On a low, flat-topped bowlder, which served the purpose of a throne, sat the Chief of the Bow-legs, playing with his unwieldy club (whichwas merely the root end of a sapling hacked into shape with sharpstones), as if it had been a bulrush. In height and bulk he was farabove his fellows, though similar to them in general type except forthe matter of color, which was dark almost to blackness. His jaws werethose of a beast, and his whole appearance was bestial beyond that ofany other in the whole hideous throng--except for his eyes. These, though small and deep-set, blazed with fierce intelligence, and swepthis audience with an air of assured mastery which made plain why hewas chief. He was talking rapidly, with broad gestures, and in abarking, clicking speech which sounded little more than halfarticulate. He was working himself up into a rage; and the squattinglisteners wriggled apprehensively, while they applauded from time totime with grunts and growls. 

Near the end of the foremost rank of the semi-circle, very close tothe haranguing Chief, sat one who was plainly of superior race to hiscompanions. Something in the harangue seemed to concern himparticularly, for he sprang to his feet and stood leaning on hisclub--which was longer and more symmetrically fashioned than that ofthe chief. In color he was manifestly white, for all that dirt andthe weather could do to disguise it. He was taller even than the greatBlack Chief himself--but shorter in the body, and achieving hisheight through length and straightness of leg. He had chest andshoulders of enormous power; but, unlike the barrel-shaped Bow-legshe was comparatively slim of waist and hips. He had less hair onthe body--except on the chest and forearm--than his companions;but far more on the head, where it stood out all around like animmense black-tawny mane. His face, though heavy and lowering, _was_a face--with square, resolute jaws, a modelled mouth, a big, fully-bridged nose, and a spacious forehead. His eyes were blue, andnow, deep under their shaggy brows, glared upon the Chief withdesperate defiance. Close behind his heels crouched a girl, obviously of his own race--a tall, strong, shapely figure of awoman, as could well be seen, though her attitude was one of utterdejection, her face sunk upon her knees, and half her body hiddenin the tangled torrent of her dull chestnut hair. 

The tall alien, so dauntlessly eyeing the Chief, was Mawg therenegade. Arrogant in his folly, he had not realized that the Tree Menwould hold him to account for the calamity which he had brought uponthem. He had not realized that the girl A-ya, with her straight limbsand her strong comeliness, might stir the craving of others besideshimself. Now, as he listened to the fierce harangue of the Chief, ashis alert ears caught the mutterings behind and about him, he saw thepit yawn suddenly at his feet. But though a brute and a traitor, hewas no coward. His veins began to run hot, his sinews to stretch forthe death struggle which would presently be upon him. 

As for the girl, unseeing, unhearing, her head bowed between her nakedknees, she cared nothing. She loathed life, and all about her, equally. Her baby and her lord, if they yet lived, were far awaybeyond the mountains and the swamps, in the caverned hillside behindthe smoke of the fires. Her captor, Mawg, she loathed above all; butshe was here behind him because he held her always within reach lestthe filthy women of the Bow-legs should tear her to pieces. 

Suddenly, without looking around, Mawg spoke to her, in their owntongue, which the Bow-legs could not understand. "Be ready, girl. Theyare going to kill me now. The Black Chief wants you. But I kill himand we run. They are all dirt. _Come!_"

On the word, he sprang straight at the great Black Chief, where hetowered upon his rock. But the girl, though she heard every syllable, never stirred. 

The spring of Mawg was like a leopard's; but the Black Chief, thoughslow of foot, was not slow of hand or wits. Though taken by surprise, he swung up his club in time to partly parry Mawg's lightning stroke, which would otherwise have broken his bull neck. As it was, the clubwas almost beaten from his grasp. He dropped it with a snarl andleaped at his assailant's throat with clutching hands. 

Had it been possible to fight it out man to man, Mawg would have likednothing better, though the issue would have been a doubtful one. Buthe had no mind to face the whole tribe, which was now surging forwardlike a pack of wolves. He had no time to repeat his blow fairly; butas he eluded the gigantic, clutching fingers he got in a lightglancing stroke with the butt which laid open his adversary's cheekand closed one furious little eye. At the same instant he whirled awaylithely, sprang from the rock on the further side, and ran off like adeer through the trees, cursing the girl because she had not followedhim. About half the tribe went trailing after him, yelling hoarsely, while the rest drew back and waited uneasily to see what their Chiefwould do. 

The Chief, clapping one hairy hand over his wounded eye, glared afterthe fugitive with the other. But he knew the folly of trying to catchhis fleet-footed adversary, and after a moment he dismissed him fromhis mind. With a grunt he stepped down from his rock, and heedless ofhis wound, strode over to the girl. Through all the tumult she hadnever lifted her head from between her knees, or shown the least signof concern. The Chief seized her by the shoulder and shook herroughly, ordering her to come with him. She did not understand hislanguage, but his meaning was obvious. She looked up and staredstraight into his one open eye. In her own eyes shifted the dangerous, lambent flame of a beast at bay, and for a moment she was on the pointof darting at his throat. 

But not without reason was the Black Chief dictator of the Bow-legs. Brutal and filthy though he was, and hideous beyond description, andhorrible with his gashed face and the blood pouring down over his hugeand shaggy chest, he was all a man, and the mastery in him checkedher. She felt the hopelessness of fighting her fate. The flameflickered out, leaving her eyes dull and leaden. She rose listlessly, and followed her new lord to the tree in which he had his dwelling ofwoven branches. 

At the foot of the tree the Black Chief stopped, stood back, andsigned the girl to ascend. A climber as expert as himself, sheclutched the rough trunk with accustomed hands. Then she hesitated, and shut her eyes. Should she obey, yielding to her fate? Mawg, herlate captor, she had hated with a murderous hate; yet she hadsubmitted to him, in a dim way biding her time for vengeance. He wasof her own race; and it was in her mind, her spirit--though sheherself could not so analyze the emotion--that she hated him. But thisnew master was an alien, and of a lower, beastlier type. Toward himshe felt a sick bodily repulsion. Behind her tight-shut lids the darkwent red. She stood rigid and quivering, stormed through by a ragingimpulse to tear out either his throat or her own. She was herself amore advanced product of her own advanced race, and urged by impulsesstill new and imperfectly applied to life. But the countless centuriesof submission were in her blood also; and they whispered to herinsidiously that she was lawful prey. A huge hand fell significantlyupon the back of her neck. She jumped, gave a sobbing cry, and sprangup into the tree. Who was she to challenge doom for an idea, a hundredthousand years before her time. 

 * * * * *

Some days' journey to the westward of the swampy refuge of theBow-legs, a tall hunter was making his way warily through the forest. His color, his build, and his swift grace of movement proclaimed himof the same race as Mawg and the girl A-ya, acquitting him easily ofany kinship with the People of the Trees. In height and weight he wasmuch like Mawg, but lighter in complexion, somewhat less hairy, and ofa frank, sagacious countenance. His eyes were of a blue-gray, calm andpiercing, yet with a look in them as of one who broods on mysteries. He was obviously much older than Mawg, his long, thick hair and short, close-curling beard being liberally touched with gray. He carried inone hand a peculiar long-handled club, which he had fashioned bylashing, with strips of green hide, a split and jagged flint-stoneinto the cleft head of a stick. In the other hand he bore two long, slender spears, their tips hardened and pointed in fire. 

On the day, now many weeks back, when Grôm set out from the Cavesbehind the Fire to seek for A-ya in the far-off country of theBow-legs, he had carried also two hollow tubes of green bark, with theseeds of fire, kept smouldering in a bed of punk, hidden in the heartsof them. But the need of stopping frequently to build a fire and renewthe vitality of the secret spark had soon exasperated his impatientspirit. Intolerant of the hindrance, and confident in his own strengthand craft, he had thrown the fire-tubes away and fallen back upon theweapons which had sufficed him before his discovery and conquest ofthe Shining One. 

Engrossed in his purpose, thinking only of regaining possession of thegirl, the mother of his man-child, he shunned all contest with thegreat beasts which crossed his path, and fled without shame from thosewhich undertook to hunt him. 

He would risk no doubtful battle. He satisfied his hunger on wildhoney, and the ripe fruits and tubers with which the forest aboundedat this season. At night he made his nest, of hurriedly wovenbranches, in the highest swaying of the tree-tops, where not even theleopard, cunning climber though she was, could come at him withoutgiving timely warning. And so, doggedly and swiftly making his way dueeast, he came at length to the fringes of that vast region of swampymeres and fruitful, rankly wooded islets which was occupied by theBow-legs. 

Here he had need of all that wood-craft which had so often enabled himto stalk even the wary antelope. The light color of his skin being abetrayal, he rubbed himself with clayey ooze till he was of the samehue as the Bow-legs. Crawling through the undergrowth at dusk assoundlessly as a snake, or swinging along smoothly through thebranches like a gray ape in the first confusing glimmer of the dawn, he made short incursions among the outlying colonies, but could findno sign of the girl, or Mawg, in whose hands he imagined her still tobe. But working warily around the outskirts of the tribe, tonorthward, he came at last upon the stale but unmistakable trail of aflight and a pursuit. This he followed up till the pursuit camestragglingly to an end, and the trail of the fugitive stood out aloneand distinct. One clear footprint in the wet earth revealed itselfclearly as Mawg's--for there was no such thing as confounding thatarched and moulded imprint with those left by the apish men. Feverishly the hunter cast about for another trail, smaller andslimmer. Forward he searched for it, and then back among the trampingsof the pursuers. But in vain. Clearly Mawg had been the solefugitive. 

Grôm sat down in sudden despair. If Mawg, who at least was no coward, had fled alone, then surely the girl was dead. Grôm's club and hisspears dropped from his nerveless hands. His interest in life sankinto a sick indifference, a dull anguish which he did not even try tounderstand. It was well for him that no prowling beast came by in thatmoment of his unseeing weakness. Then a new thought came to him, andhis despair flamed into rage. He leapt to his feet, clutching at hisshaggy beard. The girl had been seized, without doubt, by the greatBlack Chief. The thought of this defilement to his woman, the motherof his man-child, drove him quite mad for the moment. Snatching up hisweapons, he roared with anguish, and ran blindly forward along thetrampled trail, ready to hurl himself upon the whole loathsome tribe. A gigantic leopard, crouching in a thicket of scarlet poinsettiabeside the trail, made as if to pounce upon him as he went by--butshrank back, instead, with flattened ears, daunted by his fury. 

But presently the madness burned itself out. As sanity returned hechecked his rush, glanced once more watchfully about him, and atlength stepped furtively into the thick of the jungle. Now more thanever was his coolest craft demanded, that A-ya might be plucked fromthe monster's arms. 

Following up the plain clue of that tremendous pursuit, Grôm workedhis way deep into the Bow-legs' country. With all his craft and hislynx-like stealth, it was at times hair-raising work. Not only theground thickets, but the tree-tops as well, were swarming with hiskeen-eyed foes. He had to worm his way between swamp-sodden roots, andsometimes lie moveless as a stone for hours, enduring the stings of amillion insects. Sometimes, not daring to lift his head to look abouthim, he had to trust to his ears and his hound-like sense of smell forinformation as to what was going on. And sometimes it was only histireless immobility that saved him from the stroke of a startled adderor a questioning and indignant crotalus. After long swaying, poisedfor the death-stroke, the serpent would decide that the menacing thingbefore it was not alive. It would slowly dissolve its tense coils, andglide away; and Grôm would resume his shadowy progress. 

Then, about sunrise (for the Bow-legs, like the birds, were earlyrisers) of the second day after the discovery of Mawg's footprints, the patient hunter's eyes fell upon A-ya. He had crept in to within ahundred yards or so of the Council Rock, which was surrounded by ahorde of the Bow-legs. Crouching low as he was, in a dense thicket, Grôm's view was limited; but he could see, over the heads of thelistening mob, the Black Chief seated on the rock, his ragged club inhis hand. He was haranguing his warriors in rapid clicks andgutturals, which conveyed no meaning to Grôm's ear. The harangue camesoon to an end. The Chief stood up. The bestial crowd parted--andthrough the opening Grôm saw A-ya, crouched, with her hair over herknees, at the Chief's feet. Stepping down from the rock, the Chiefseized her by the wrist and dragged her upright. She took her place athis heels, dejectedly, like a whipped dog. Grôm, from within histhicket, ground his teeth, and with difficulty held himself in leash. Surrounded as A-ya was, at that moment, by the hordes of her captors, any attempt at her rescue would have been hopeless folly. 

There was something going on among the bow-legged mob which Grôm, fromhis hiding-place could not at first make out. Then he saw that theChief was trying to instruct his powerful but clumsy followers in thehandling of the club and spear. Having been taught by the whiterenegade, Mawg, the Chief used his massive club with skill, but he wasstill clumsy and absurdly inaccurate in throwing the spear. After hehad split the face of one of his followers by a misdirected cast, hegave up the spear-throwing, turned to the girl, and ordered her toteach this art of her people. It was obvious that the mob had vastconfidence in her powers, as one of superior race, although a merewoman, for they opened out at once on two sides to leave room for theexpected display. The heart of the watcher in the thicket began tothump as he saw a way clearing itself between his hiding-place and thewild-haired woman he loved. 

A-ya affected to misunderstand the Chief's orders. She took the spear, but stood holding it in stupid dejection. The Chief threatened herangrily, but she paid no attention. At this moment the whistling cryof a plover sounded from the thicket. The girl straightened herselfand every muscle grew tense. The melancholy cry came again. It was astrange place for a plover to lurk in, that rank thicket of jungle;but the Bow-legs took no notice of the incongruity. Upon the girl, however, the effect of the cry was magical. She gave no glance towardthe thicket, but suddenly, smilingly, she seemed to understand theorders of the Chief. Poising the rude spear at the height of hershoulder, she pointed to a huge, whitish fungus which grew upon atree-root some sixty or seventy feet away. With a flexing of her wholelithe body--as Grôm had taught her--she made her throw. The whitefungus was split in halves. 

With a hoarse clamor of admiration, the mob surged forward to examinethe fragments. Even the Chief, though disdaining to show the interestof his followers, took a stride or two in the same direction. For asecond his back was turned. In that second, the girl fled, light andswift as a deer, speeding toward the thicket whence the cry of theplover had sounded. Her long bushy hair streamed out behind her as sheran. 

With a bellow of wrath, the Black Chief, the whole mob at his heels, came pounding after her. The next instant, out from the thicket leaptGrôm, a towering figure, and stood with spear uplifted. Like a lion atbay, he glanced swiftly this way and that, balancing the chances ofbattle and escape, while he menaced the foes immediately confrontinghim. 

At this amazing apparition, the mob paused irresolute; but the BlackChief came on like a mad buffalo. Grôm hurled one of his two spears. He hurled it with a loathing fury; but he was compelled to throw high, to clear A-ya's head. The Chief saw it coming, and cunningly flunghimself forward on his face. The weapon hurtled on viciously, andpierced the squat body of one of the waverers a dozen paces behind. Athis yell of agony the mob woke up, and came on again with guttural, barking cries. But already Grôm and the girl, side by side, werefleeing down an open glade to the left, toward a breadth of stillwater which they saw gleaming through the trunks. Grôm knew that theway behind him was swarming with the enemy. He had seen that there wasno chance of getting through the hordes in front and to the right. Butin this direction there were only a few knots of shaggy women, whoshrank in terror at his approach; and he gambled on the chance of thebow-legged men having no great skill in the water. 

All the Folk of the Caves could swim like otters, and both Grôm andthe girl were expert beyond their fellows. The water before them wassome three or four hundred yards in width. They did not know whetherit was a sluggish fenland river, or the arm of a lake; but, heedlessof the peril of crocodiles and water-snakes they plunged in, and withlong powerful side-strokes went surging across toward the oppositeshore. They had a clear start of thirty or forty yards, and their pacein the water was tremendous. Some heavy splashes in the water behindthem showed how the clumsy missiles of their foes--ragged clubs andfragments of broken branches--were falling short; and they looked backderisively. 

The bow-legged, shaggy men with their wide, red, skyward nostrils wereranged along the shore, and the Chief was fiercely urging them intothe water. They shrank back in horror at the prospect--which, indeed, seemed little to the taste of the Chief himself. Presently he seizedthe two nearest by their matted manes, and flung them headlong in. With yells of terror they scrambled out again, and scurried off to therear like half-drowned hens. 

The Chief screeched an order. Straightway the mob divided. One partwent racing clumsily up the shore to the left, the other followed theChief along through the rank sedge-growth to the right--the Chief, byreason of his superior stature and length of leg, rapidly opening uphis lead. 

"It's nothing but a pond, " said Grôm, in disgust, "and they're cominground the shore to head us off. "

But the girl, her hair trailing darkly on the water behind her, onlylaughed. She was free at last. And she was with her man. 

Suddenly Grôm felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the calf of his leg. Witha cry, he looked back, expecting to see a water-snake gliding off. Hesaw nothing. But in the next instant another stab came in the otherleg. Then A-ya screamed: "They're biting me all over. " A dozenstinging punctures distributed themselves all at once over Grôm'sbody. Then he understood that their assailants were not water-snakes. 

"Quick! To shore!" he ordered. Throwing all their strength into abreath-sapping, over-hand roll, they shot forward, gained the weedyshallows, and scrambled ashore. Their bodies were hung thickly withgigantic leeches. 

Heedless of the wounds and the drench of blood, they tore off theirloathsome assailants. Then, after a few seconds' halt to regain breathand decide on their direction, they started northwestward at a rapid, swinging lope, through a region of open, grassy glades set withthickets of giant fern and mimosa. 

They had run on at this free pace for a matter of half-an-hour ormore, and were beginning to flatter themselves that they had shakenoff their pursuers, when almost directly ahead of them, to the right, appeared the Black Chief, lumbering down upon them. Nearly half-a-milebehind, between the mimosa clumps, could be seen the mob of hisfollowers straggling up to his support. He yelled a furious challenge, swung up his great club, and charged upon Grôm. Waving A-ya behindhim, Grôm strode forward, accepting the challenge. 

As man to man, the rivals looked not unfairly matched. The fair-skinnedMan of the Caves was the taller by half a head, but obviously thelighter in weight by a full stone, if not more. His long, straight, powerfully muscled legs had not the massive strength of his bow-leggedadversary's. He was even slim, by comparison, in hip and waist. Butin chest, arms and shoulders his development was finer. Physically, it seemed a matter of the lion against the bear. 

To Grôm there was one thing almost as vital, in that moment, as therescue of his woman. This was the slaking of his lust of hate againstthe filthy beast-man who had held that woman captive. Fading ancestralinstincts flamed into new life within him. His impulse was to flingdown spear and club, to fall upon his rival with bare, throttlinghands and rending teeth. But his will, and his realization of all thathung upon the outcome, held this madness in check. 

Silent and motionless, poised lightly and gathered as if for a spring, Grôm waited till his adversary was within some thirty paces of him. Then, with deadly force and sure aim, he hurled his one remainingspear. But he had not counted on the lightning accuracy, swifter thanthought itself, with which the men of the trees used their huge hands. The Black Chief caught the spear-head within a few inches of his body. With a roar of rage he snapped the tough shaft like a parsnip stalk, and threw the pieces aside. Even as he did so, Grôm, still voicelessand noiseless, was upon him. 

Had the vicious swing of Grôm's flint-headed club found its mark, thebattle would have been over. But the Black Chief, for all his bulk, was quick as an eel. He bowed himself to the earth, so that the strokewhistled idly over him, and in the next second he swung a vicious, short blow upwards. It was well-aimed, at the small of Grôm's back. But the latter, feeling himself over-balanced by his own ineffectiveviolence, leapt far out of reach before turning to see what hadhappened. The Chief recovered himself, and the two lashed out at eachother so exactly together that the great clubs met in mid-air. Soshattering was the force of the impact, so numbing the shock to thehairy wrists behind it, that both weapons dropped to the ground. 

Neither antagonist dared stoop to snatch them up. For several secondsthey stood glaring at each other, their breath hissing throughclenched teeth, their knotted fingers opening and shutting. Then theysprang at each other's throats--Grôm in silence, the Black Chiefsnarling hoarsely. Neither, however, gained the fatal grip at which heaimed. They found themselves in a fair clinch, and stood swaying, straining, sweating, and grunting, so equally matched in sheerstrength that to A-ya, standing breathless with suspense, the dreadfulseconds seemed to drag themselves out to hours. Then Grôm, amazed tofind that in brute force he had met his match, feigned to give way. Loosing the clutch of one arm, he dropped upon his knees. With a gruntof triumph the Black Chief crashed down upon him, only to find himselfclutched by the legs and hurled clean over his wily adversary's head. Before he could recover himself, Grôm was upon him, pinning him to theearth and reaching for his throat. In desperation he set his huge apeteeth, with the grip of a bull-dog, deep into the muscular base ofGrôm's neck, and began working his way in toward the artery. 

At this moment A-ya glanced about her. She saw two bodies of theBow-legs closing in upon them from either side--the nearest not muchmore than a couple of hundred yards distant. Her lord had plainlyordered her to stand aside from this combat, but this was no time forobedience. She snatched up the sharpened fragment of the broken spear. Gripping it with both hands she drove it with all her force into theside of the Black Chief's throat, and left it there. With a hideouscough his grip relaxed. His limbs straightened out stiffly, and he layquivering. 

Covered with blood, Grôm sprang to his feet, and turned angrily uponA-ya. "_I_ would have killed him, " he said, coldly. 

"There was no time, " answered the girl, and pointed to the advancinghordes. 

Without a word Grôm snatched up his club, wrenched the broken spearfrom his dead rival's neck, thrust it into the girl's hands, anddarted for the narrowing space of open between the two convergingmobs. 

With their greatly superior speed it was obvious that the twofugitives might reasonably expect to win through. They were surprised, therefore, at the note of triumph in the furious cries of theBow-legs. A few hundred yards ahead the comparatively open countrycame to an end, and its place was taken by a belt of splendid crimsonbloom, extending to right and left as far as the eye could see. It wasa jungle of shrubs some twenty feet high, with scanty, pale-greenleaves almost hidden by their exuberance of blossom. But jungle thoughit was, Grôm's sagacious eyes decided that it was by no means denseenough to seriously hinder their flight. When they reached it, thejabbering hordes were almost upon them. But, with mocking laughter, they slipped through, and plunged in among the gray stems, beneath theovershadowed rosy glow. Their pursuers yelled wildly--it seemed toGrôm a yell of exultation--but they halted abruptly at the edge of therosy barrier and made no attempt to follow. 

"They know they can't catch us, " said Grôm, slackening his pace. Butthe girl, puzzled by this sudden stopping of the pursuit, felt uneasyand made no reply. 

Loping onward at moderate pace through the enchanting pink light, which filtered down about them through the massed bloom overhead, theypresently became conscious of an oppressive silence. The cries oftheir pursuers having died away behind them, there was now nothing butthe soft thud of their own footfalls to relieve the anxious intentnessof their ears. Not a bird-note, not the flutter of a wing, not the humor the darting of a single insect, disturbed the strangely heavy air. No snake or lizard or squeaking mouse scurried among the fallenleaves. They wondered greatly at such stillness. Then they wondered atthe absence of small undergrowth, the lack of other shrubs and treessuch as were wont to grow together in the warm jungle. Nothinganywhere about them but the endless gray stems and pallid slim leavesof the oleander, with their rose-red roof of blossom. 

Presently they felt a lethargy creeping over their limbs, which beganto grow heavy; and a dull pain came throbbing behind their eyes. Thenunderstanding of those cries of triumph flashed into Grôm's mind. Hestopped and clutched the girl by the wrist. "It is poison here. It isdeath, " he muttered. "That's why they shouted. "

"Yes, everything is dead but the red flowers, " whispered A-ya, andclung to him, shuddering with awe. 

"Courage!" cried Grôm, lifting his head and dashing his great handacross his eyes. "We _must_ get through. We _must_ find air. "

Shaking off the deadly sloth, they ran on again at full speed, peeringthrough the stems in every direction. The effort made their brainsthrob fiercely. And still there was nothing before them and about thembut the endless succession of slender gray stems and the downpour ofthat sinister rosy light. At last A-ya's steps began to lag, as if shewere growing sleepy. 

"Wake up!" shouted Grôm, and dragged so fiercely at her arm that shecried out. But the pain aroused her to a new effort. She sprangforward, sobbing. The next moment, she was jerked violently to theleft. "This way!" panted Grôm, the sweat pouring down his livid face;and there, through the stems to the left, her dazed eyes perceivedthat the hated rosy glow was paling into the whiteness of the naturalday. 

It was a big white rock, an island thrust up through the sea oftreacherous bloom. With fumbling, nerveless fingers they scaled itsbare sides, flung themselves down among the scant but wholesomeherbage, which clothed its top, and filled their lungs with the clean, reviving air. Dimly they heard a blessed buzzing of insects, andseveral great flies, with barred wings, lit upon them and bit themsharply. They lay with closed eyes, while slowly the throbbing intheir brains died away and strength flowed back into their unstrunglimbs. 

Then, after perhaps an hour, Grôm sat up and looked about him. Onevery side outspread the fatal flood of the rose-red oleanders, unbroken except toward the north-west. In that quarter, however, aspur of the giant forest, of growths too mighty to feel the spell ofthe envenomed blooms, was thrust deep into the crimson tide. Its tipcame to within a couple of hundred yards of the rock. Having fullyrecovered, Grôm and A-ya swung down, with loathing, into the pinkgloom, fled through it almost without drawing breath, and foundthemselves once more in the rank green shadows of the jungle. Theywent on till they came to a thicket of plantains. Then, loadingthemselves with ripe fruit, they climbed high into a tree, and wovethemselves a safe resting-place among the branches. 

For the next few days their journey was without adventure, save forthe frequent eluding of the monsters of that teeming world. Grôm hadhis club, A-ya her broken spear; but they were avoiding all combats intheir haste to get back to their own country of the homely caves andthe guardian watch-fires. At the approach of the great black lion orthe saber-tooth, or the wantonly malignant rhinoceros, they betookthemselves to the tree-tops, and continued their way by that aërialpath as long as it served them. The most subtle of the beasts theyknew they could outwit, and their own anxiety now was Mawg, whosecraft and courage Grôm could no longer hold in scorn. He was doubtlessat large, and quite possibly on their trail, biding his time to catchthem unawares. They never allowed themselves, therefore, to sleep bothat the same time. One always kept on guard: and hence their progress, for all their eagerness, was slower than it would otherwise havebeen. 

On a certain day, after a long unbroken stretch of travel, A-ya restedand kept watch in a tree-top, while Grôm went to fetch a bunch ofplantains. It was fairly open country, a region of low herbage dottedwith small groves and single trees; and the girl, herself securelyhidden, could see in every direction. She could see Grôm wanderingfrom plantain clump to plantain clump, seeking fruit ripe enough to bepalatable. And then, with a shiver of hate and dread, she saw the darkform of Mawg, creeping noiselessly on Grôm's trail, and not more thana couple of hundred paces behind him. At the very moment when her eyesfell upon him, he dropped flat upon his face, and began worming hisway soundlessly through the herbage. 

Her mouth opened wide to give the alarm. But the cry stopped in herthroat, and a smile of bitter triumph spread over her face. 

If Mawg was hunting Grôm, he was at the same time himself beinghunted. And by a dreadful hunter. 

Out from behind a thicket of glowing mimosa appeared a monstrous bird, some ten or twelve feet in height, lifting its feet very high in aswift but noiseless and curiously delicate stride. Its dark plumagewas more like long, stringy hair than feathers. Its build wassomething like that of a gigantic cassowary, but its thighs and longblue shanks were proportionately more massive. Its neck was long, butimmensely muscular to support the enormous head, which was larger thanthat of a horse, and armed with a huge, hooked, rending, vulture'sbeak. The apparent length of this terrible head was increased by apointed crest of blood-red feathers, projecting straight back in aline with the fore-part of the skull and the beak. 

The crawling figure of Mawg was still a good hundred paces from theunsuspecting Grôm, when the great bird overtook it. A-ya, watchingfrom her tree-top, clutched a branch and held her breath. Mawg's earscaught a sound behind him, and he glanced around sharply. With ascream, he bounded to his feet. But it was too late. Before he couldeither strike or flee, he was beaten down again, with a smash of thatpile-driving beak. The bird planted one huge foot on its victim'sloins, gripped his head in its beak, and neatly snapped his neck. Thenit fell greedily to its hideous meal. 

At Mawg's scream of terror, Grôm had turned and rushed to the rescue, swinging his club. But before he had covered half the distance, he sawthat the monster had done its work; and he hesitated. He was too lateto help the victim. And he knew the mettle of this ferocious bird, almost as much to be dreaded, in single combat, as the saber-toothitself. At his approach, the bird had lifted its dripping beak, halfturned, and stood gripping the prey with one foot, swaying its grimhead slowly and eyeing him with malevolent defiance. Still hehesitated, fingering his club; for the insolence of that challengingstare made his blood seethe. Then came A-ya's voice from the tree-top, calling him. "Come away!" she cried. "It was Mawg. "

Whereupon he turned, with the content of one who sees all old scorescleanly wiped out together, and went back to gather his ripeplantains. 

The peril of Mawg being thus removed from their path, they journeyedmore swiftly; and when the next new moon was a thin white sickle inthe sky, just above the line of saw-toothed hills, they came safelyback to the comfortable caves and the clear-burning watch-fires oftheir tribe. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE BENDING OF THE BOW

Before the Caves of the Pointed Hills the fires of the tribe burnedbrightly. Within the caves reigned plenty and an unheard-of security;for since the conquest of fire those monstrous beasts and giganticcarnivorous, running birds, which had been Man's ceaseless menace eversince he swung down out of the tree-tops to walk the earth erect, hadbeen held at a distance through awe of the licking flames. Though thegreat battle which had hurled back the invading hosts of the Bow-legshad cost the tribe more than half its warriors, the Caves wereswarming with vigorous children. To Bawr, the Chief, and to Grôm, hisRight Hand and Councilor, the future of the tribe looked secure. 

So sharp had been the lessons lately administered to the prowlingbeasts--the terrible saber-tooth, the giant red bear of the caves, theproud black lion, and the bone-crushing cave hyena--that even thestretch of bumpy plain outside the circle of the fires, to a distanceof several hundred paces, was considered a safe playground for thechildren of the tribe. On the outermost skirts of this playground, tobe sure, just where the reedy pools and the dense bamboo thicketsbegan, there was a fire kept burning. But this was more as a reminderthan as an actual defense. When a bear or a saber-tooth had once had ablazing brand thrust in his face, he acquired a measure of discretion. Moreover, the activities of the tribe had driven all the game animalsto some distance up the valley; and it was seldom that anything moreformidable than a jackal or a civet-cat cared to come within ahalf-mile of the fires. 

It was now two years since the rescue of A-ya from her captivity amongthe Bow-legs. Her child by Grôm was a straight-limbed, fair-skinnedlad of somewhere between four and five years. She sat cross-leggednear the sentinel fire, some fifty yards or so from the edge of thethickets, and played with the lad, whose eyes were alight with eagerintelligence. Behind her sprawled, playing contentedly with its toesand sucking a banana, a fat brown flat-nosed baby of some fourteen orfifteen months. 

Both A-ya and the boy were interested in a new toy. It was, perhaps, the first whip. The boy had succeeded in tying a thin strip of greenhide, something over three feet in length, to one end of a stick whichwas several inches longer. The uses of a whip came to him by unerringinsight, and he began applying it to his mother's shoulders. Thenovelty of it delighted them both. A-ya, moreover, chuckled slyly atthe thought that the procedure might, on some future occasion, bereversed, not without advantage to the cause of discipline. 

At last the lithe lash, so enthusiastically wielded, stung too hardfor even A-ya, with all her stoicism, to find it amusing. She snatchedthe toy away and began playing with it herself. The lash, at its freeend, chanced to be slit almost to the tip, forming a loop. The butt ofthe handle was formed by a jagged knot, where it had been broken fromthe parent stem. Idly but firmly, with her strong hands she bent thestick, and slipped the loop over the jagged knot, where it held. 

Interested, but with no hint of comprehension in her bright eyes, shelooked upon the first bow--the stupendous product of a child and awoman playing. 

The child, displeased at this new, useless thing, and wanting his whipback, tried to snatch the bow from his mother's hands. But she pushedhim off. She liked this new toy. It looked, somehow, as if it invitedher to do something with it. Presently she pulled the cord, and let itgo again. Tightly strung, it made a pleasant little humming sound. This she repeated many times, holding it up to her ear and laughingwith pleasure. The boy grew interested thereupon, and wanted to trythe new game for himself. But A-ya was too absorbed. She would not lethim touch it. "Go get another stick, " she commanded impatiently; butquite forgot to see her command obeyed. 

As she was twanging the strange implement which had so happilyfashioned itself under her hands, Grôm came up behind her. He steppedcarefully over the sprawling brown baby. He was about to pull herheavy hair affectionately; but his eyes fell upon the thing in herhands, and he checked himself. 

For minute after minute he stood there motionless, watching andstudying the new toy. His eyes narrowed, his brows drew themselvesdown broodingly. The thing seemed to him to suggest dim, cloudy, vastpossibilities; and he groped in his brain for some hint of the natureof these possibilities. Yet as far as he could see it was good fornothing but to make a faintly pleasant twang for the amusement ofwomen and children. At last he could keep his hands off it no longer. "Give it to me, " said he suddenly, laying hold of A-ya's wrist. 

But A-ya was not yet done with it. She held it away from him, andtwanged it with redoubled vigor. Without further argument, and withoutviolence, Grôm reached out a long arm, and found the bow in his grasp. A-ya was surprised that such a trifle should seem of such importancein her lord's eyes; but her faith was great. She shook the wild maneof hair back from her face, silenced the boy's importunings with animperative gesture, and gathered herself with her arms about bothknees to watch what Grôm would do with the plaything. 

First he examined it minutely, and then he fastened the thong moresecurely at either end. He twanged it as A-ya had done. He bent it toits limit and eased it slowly back again, studying the new forceimprisoned in the changing curve. At last he asked who had made it. 

"I did, " answered A-ya, very proud of her achievement now that shefound it taken so seriously by one being to whom her adventurousspirit really deferred. 

"No, _I_ did!" piped the boy, with an injured air. 

The mother laughed indulgently. "Yes, he tied one end, and beat mewith it, " said she. "Then I took it from him, and bent the stick andtied the other end. "

"It is very good!" said Grôm, nodding his approval musingly. Hesquatted down a few feet away, and began experimenting. 

Picking up a small stone, he held it upon the cord, bent the bow alittle way, and let go. The stone flew up and hit him with amazingenergy in the mouth. 

"_Oh!_" murmured A-ya, sympathetically, as the bright blood ran downhis beard. But the child, thinking that his father had done it onpurpose, laughed with hearty appreciation. Somewhat annoyed, Grôm gotup, moved a few paces farther away, and sat down again with his backto the family circle. 

As to the force that lurked in this slender little implement he wasnow fully satisfied. But he was not satisfied with the direction inwhich it exerted itself. He continued his experiments, but was carefulto draw the bow lightly. 

For a long time he found it impossible to guess beforehand thedirection which the pebbles, or the bits of stick or bark, would takein their surprising leaps from the loosed bow-string. But at length adim idea of aim occurred to him. He lifted the bow--his left fistgrasping its middle--to the level of his eyes, at arm's length. He gotthe cord accurately in the center of the pebble, and drew toward hisnose. This effort was so successful that the stone went perfectlystraight--and caught him fair on the thumb-knuckle. 

The blow was so sharp that he dropped the bow with an angryexclamation. Glancing quickly over his shoulder to see if A-ya hadnoticed the incident, he observed that her face was buried between herknees and quite hidden by her hair. But her shoulders were heavingspasmodically. He suspected that she was laughing at him; and for amoment, as his knuckle was aching fiercely, he considered theadvisability of giving her a beating. He had never done such a thingto her, however, though all the other Cave Men, including Bawrhimself, were wont to beat their women on occasion. In his heart hehated the idea of hurting her; and it would hardly be worth while tobeat her without hurting her. The idea, therefore, was promptlydismissed. He eyed the shaking shoulders gloomily for some seconds;and then, as the throbbing in the outraged knuckle subsided, a grin ofsympathetic comprehension spread over his own face. He picked up thebow, sprang to his feet, and strolled over to the edge of a thicket ofyoung cane. 

The girl, lifting her head, peered at him cautiously through her hair. Her laughter was forgotten on the instant, because she guessed thathis fertile brain was on the trail of some new experiment. 

Arriving at the cane-thicket, Grôm broke himself half a dozenwell-hardened, tapering stems, from two to three feet in length, andabout as thick at their smaller ends as A-ya's little finger. 

These seemed to suggest to him the possibility of better results thananything he could get from those erratic pebbles. 

By this time quite a number of curious spectators--women and childrenmostly, the majority of the men being away hunting, and the rest tooproud to show their curiosity--had gathered to watch Grôm'sexperiments. They were puzzled to make out what it was he was busyinghimself with. But as he was a great chief, and held in deeper awe thaneven Bawr himself, they did not presume to come very near; and theyhad therefore not perceived, or at least they had not apprehended, those two trifling mishaps of his. As for Grôm, he paid his audienceno attention whatever. Now that he had possessed himself of thoseslender straight shafts of cane, all else was forgotten. He felt, ashe looked at them and poised them, that in some vital way theybelonged to this fascinating implement which A-ya had invented forhim. 

Selecting one of the shafts, he slowly applied the bigger end of it tothe bow-string, and stood for a long time pondering it, drawing it alittle way and easing it back without releasing it. Then he called tomind that his spears always threw better when they were hurled heavyend first. So he turned the little shaft and applied the small end tothe bow-string. Then he pulled the string tentatively, and let it go. The arrow, all unguided, shot straight up into the air, turned over, fell sharply, and buried its head in a bit of soft ground. Grôm feltthat this was progress. The spectators opened their mouths in wonder, but durst not venture any comment when Grôm was at his mysteries. 

Plucking the shaft from the earth, Grôm once more laid it to thebow-string. As he pulled the string, the shaft wobbled crazily. With agrowl of impatience, he clapped the fore-finger of his left hand overit, holding it in place, and pulled it through the guide thus formed. A light flashed upon his brooding intelligence. Slightly crooking hisfinger, so that the shaft could move freely, he drew the stringbackward and forward, with deep deliberation, over and over again. Tohis delight, he found that the shaft was no longer eccentricallyrebellious, but as docile as he could wish. At last, lifting the bowabove his head, he drew it strongly, and shot the shaft into the air. He shouted as it slipped smoothly through the guiding crook of hisfinger and went soaring skyward as if it would never stop. The eyes ofthe spectators followed its flight with awe, and A-ya, suddenlycomprehending, caught her breath and snatched the boy to her heart ina transport. Her alert mind had grasped, though dimly, the wonder ofher man's achievement. 

Now, though Grôm had pointed his shaft skyward, he had taken nothought whatever as to its direction, or the distance it might travel. As a matter of fact, he had shot towards the Caves. He had shotstrongly; and that first bow was a stiff one. Most of the folk whosquatted before the Caves were watching; but there were some who weretoo indifferent or too stupid to take an interest in anything lessarresting than a thump on the head. Among these was a fat old woman, who, with her back to all the excitement, was bending herself doubleto grub in the litter of sticks and bones for some tit-bit which shehad dropped. Grôm's shaft, turning gracefully against the blue camedarting downward on a long slope, and buried its point in thatupturned fat and grimy thigh. With a yell the old woman whipped round, tore out the shaft, dashed it upon the ground, stared at it in horroras if she thought it some kind of snake, and waddled, wildlyjabbering, into the nearest cave. 

An outburst of startled cries arose from all the spectators, but ithushed itself almost in the same breath. It was Grôm who had done thissingular thing, smiting unawares from very far off. The old woman musthave done something to make Grôm angry. They were all afraid; andseveral, whose consciences were not quite at ease, followed the oldwoman's example and slipped into the Caves. 

As for Grôm, his feelings were a mixture of embarrassment and elation. He was sorry to have hurt the old woman. He had a ridiculous dislikeof hurting any one unnecessarily; and when he looked back and saw A-yarocking herself to and fro in heartless mirth, he felt like asking herhow she would have liked it herself, if she had been in the place ofthe fat old woman. On the other hand, he knew that he had made a greatdiscovery, second only to the conquest of the fire. He had found a newweapon, of unheard-of, unimagined powers, able to kill swiftly andsilently and at a great distance. All he had to do was to perfect theweapon and learn to control it. 

He strode haughtily up to the cave mouth to recover his shaft. Thepeople, even the mightiest of the warriors, looked anxious anddeprecating at his approach; but he gave them never a glance. It wouldnot have done to let them think he had wounded the old woman byaccident. He picked up the shaft and examined its bloodstained point, frowning fiercely. Then he glared into the cave where the unluckyvictim of his experiments had taken refuge. He refitted the shaft tothe bow-string, and made as if to follow up his stroke with furtherchastisement. Instantly there came from the dark interior a chorus ofshrill feminine entreaties. He hesitated, seemed to relent, put theshaft into the bundle under his arm, and strode back to rejoin A-ya. He had done enough for the moment. His next step required deep thoughtand preparation. 

An hour or two later, Grôm set out from the Caves alone in spite ofA-ya's pleadings. He wanted complete solitude with his new weapon. Besides a generous bundle of canes, of varying lengths and sizes, hecarried some strips of raw meat, a bunch of plantains, his spear andclub, and a sort of rude basket, without handle, formed by tyingtogether the ends of a roll of green bark. 

This basket was a device of A-ya's, which had added greatly to herprestige in the tribe, and caused the women to regard her withredoubled jealousy. By lining it thickly with wet clay, she was ableto carry fire in it so securely and simply that Grôm had adopted it atonce, throwing away his uncertain and always troublesome fire-tubes ofhollow bamboo. 

Mounting the steep hillside behind the Caves, Grôm turned into ahigh, winding ravine, and was soon lost to the sight of the tribe. The ravine, the bed of a long-dry torrent, climbed rapidly, bearing around to the eastward, and brought him at length to a highplateau on a shoulder of the mountain. At the back of the plateau themountain rose again, abruptly, to one of those saw-tooth pinnacleswhich characterized this range. At the base of the steep was anarrow fissure in the rock-face, leading into a small grotto whichGrôm had discovered on one of his hunting expeditions. He had usedit several times already as a retreat when tired of the hubbub ofthe tribe and anxious to ponder in quiet some of the problems whichfor ever tormented his fruitful brain. 

Absorbed in meditations upon his new weapons, Grôm set himself tobuild a small fire before the entrance of the grotto. The red coalsfrom his fire-basket he surrounded and covered with dry grass, deadtwigs, and small sticks. Then, getting down upon all fours, he blewlong and steadily into the mass till the smoke which curled up from itwas streaked with thin flames. As the flames curled higher, his earscaught the sound of something stirring within the cave. He looked up, peering between the little coils of smoke, and saw a pair of eyes, very close to the ground, glaring forth at him from the darkness. 

With one hand, he coolly but swiftly fed the fire to fuller volume, while with the other he reached for and clutched his club. The eyesdrew back slowly to the depths of the cave. Appearing not to haveobserved them, Grôm piled the fire with heavier and heavier fuel, tillit was blazing strongly and full of well-lighted brands. Then he stoodup, seized a brand, and hurled it into the cave. There was a harshsnarl, and the eyes disappeared, the owner of them having apparentlyshrunk off to one side. 

A moment or two later the interior was suddenly lighted up with asmoky glare. The brand had fallen on a heap of withered grasswhich had formerly been Grôm's couch. Grôm set his teeth and swungup his club; and in the same instant there shot forth two immensecave-hyenas, mad with rage and terror. 

The great beasts were more afraid of the sudden flare within than ofthe substantial and dangerous fire without. The first swerved just intime to escape the fire, and went by so swiftly that the stroke ofGrôm's club caught him only a light, glancing blow on the rump. Butthe second of the pair, the female, was too close behind to swerve intime. She dashed straight through the fire, struck Grôm with all herfrantic weight, knocked him flat, and tore off howling down thevalley, leaving a pungent trail of singed fur on the air. 

Uninjured save for an ugly scratch, which bled profusely, down oneside of his face, Grôm picked himself up in a rage and started afterthe fleeing beasts. But his common sense speedily reasserted itself. He grunted in disgust, turned back to the fire, and was soon absorbedin new experiments with the bow. As for the blaze within the cave, hetroubled himself no more about it. He knew it would soon burn out. Andit would leave the cave well cleansed of pestilential insects. 

All that afternoon he experimented with his bundle of shafts, to findwhat length and what weight would give the best results. One of thearrows he shattered completely, by driving it, at short range, straight against the rock-face of the mountain. Two others he lost, byshooting them, far beyond his expectations, over the edge of theplateau and down into the dense thickets below him, where he did notcare to search too closely by reason of the peril of snakes. The bow, as his good luck would have it, though short and clumsy was verystrong, being made of a stick of dry upland hickory. And the cord ofraw hide was well-seasoned, stout and tough; though it had atroublesome trick of stretching, which forced Grôm to restring it manytimes before all the stretch was out of it. 

Having satisfied himself as to the power of his bow and the range ofhis arrows, Grôm set himself next to the problem of marksmanship. Selecting a plant of prickly pear, of about the dimensions of a man, he shot at it, at different ranges, till most of its great fleshyleaves were shredded and shattered. With his straight eye and hisnatural aptitude, he soon grasped the idea of elevation for range, andmade some respectable shooting. He also found that he could guide thearrow without crooking his finger around it. His elation was soextreme that he quite forgot to eat, till the closing in of darknessput an end to his practice. Then, piling high his fire as a warning toprowlers, he squatted in the mouth of the cave and made his meal. Forwater he had to go some little way below the lip of the plateau; butcarrying a blazing balsam-knot he had nothing to fear from the beaststhat lay in ambush about the spring. They slunk away sullenly at theapproach of the waving flame. 

That night Grôm slept securely, with three fires before his door. Every hour or two, vigilant woodsman that he was, he would wake up toreplenish the fires, and be asleep again even in the act of lyingdown. And when the dawn came red and amber around the shoulder of thesaw-toothed peak, he was up again and out into the chill, sweet airwith his arrows. 

The difficulty which now confronted him was that of giving his shaftsa penetrating point. Being of a very hard-fibered cane, akin tobamboo, they would take a kind of splintering-point of almost needlesharpness. But it was fragile; and the cane being hollow, the pointwas necessarily on one side, which affected the accuracy of theflight. There were no flints in the neighborhood, or slaty rocks, which he could split into edged and pointed fragments. He triedhardening his points in the fire; but the results were not altogethersatisfactory. He thought of tipping some of the shafts with thorns, orwith the steely points of the old aloe leaves; but he could not, atthe moment, devise such a method of fixing these formidable weapons inplace as would not quite destroy their efficiency. Finally he made uphis mind that the thing to use would be bone, ground into a suitableshape between two stones. But this was a matter that would have toawait his return to the Caves, and would then call for much carefuldevising. For the present he would perforce content himself with suchpoints as he had fined down and hardened in the fire. 

This matter settled in his mind, Grôm burned to put his wonderful newweapon to practical test. He descended cautiously the steep slope fromthe eastern edge of his plateau--a broken region of ledges, subtropical thickets, and narrow, grassy glades, with here and theresome tree of larger growth rising solitary like a watch-tower. Knowingthis was a favorite feeding-hour for many of the grass-eaters, he hidhimself in the well-screened crotch of a deodar, overlooking a greenglade, and waited. 

He had not long to wait, for the region swarmed with game. Out from arunway some thirty or forty yards up the glade stepped a huge, dun-colored bull, with horns like scimitars each as long as Grôm'sarm. His flanks were scarred with long wounds but lately healed, andGrôm realized that he was a solitary, beaten and driven out from hisherd by some mightier rival. The bull glanced warily about him, andthen fell to cropping the grass. 

The beast offered an admirable target. Grôm's arrow sped noiselesslybetween the curtaining branches, and found its mark high on the bull'sfore-shoulder. It penetrated--but not to a depth of more than two orthree inches. And Grôm, though elated by his good shot, realized thatsuch a wound would be nothing more than an irritant. 

Startled and infuriated, the bull roared and pawed the sod, and glaredabout him to locate his unseen assailant. He had not the remotest ideaof the direction from which the strange attack had come. The gallingsmart in his shoulder grew momentarily more severe. He lashed back atit savagely with the side of his horn, but the arrow was just out ofhis reach. Then, bewildered and alarmed, he tried to escape from thisnew kind of fly with the intolerable sting by galloping furiously upand down the glade. As he passed the deodar, Grôm let drive anotherarrow, at close range. This, too, struck, and stuck. But it did not godeep enough to produce any serious effect. The animal roared again, stared about him as if he thought the place was bewitched, and plungedheadlong into the nearest thicket, tearing out both arrows as he wentthrough the close-set stems. Grôm heard him crashing onward down theslope, and smiled to think of the surprise in store for any antagonistthat might cross the mad brute's path. 

This experiment upon the wild bull had shown Grôm one thing clearly. He must arm his arrows with a more penetrating point. Until he couldcarry out his idea of giving them tips of bones, he must find someshoots of solid, pithless growth to take the place of his light hollowcanes. For the next hour or two he searched the jungle carefully andwarily, looking for a young growth that might immediately serve hispurpose. 

But there in the jungle everything that was hard enough was crooked orgnarled, everything that was straight enough was soft and sappy. Itwas not till the sun was almost over his head, and the heat was urginghim back to the coolness of his grotto, that he came across somethingworth making a trial of. On a bleak wind-swept knoll, far out on themountain-side, lay the trunk of an old hickory-tree, which hadevidently been shattered by lightning. From the roots, tenacious oflife, had sprung up a throng of saplings, ranging from a foot or twoin height to the level of Grôm's head. They were as straight and slimas the canes. And their hardness was proved to Grôm's satisfactionwhen he tried to break them off. They were tough, too, so that healmost lost his patience over them, before he learned that the bestway to deal with them was to strip them down, in the direction of thefiber, where they sprang from the parent trunk or root. Having atlength gathered an armful, he returned to his grotto and proceeded toshape the refractory butts in the fire. As he squatted between thecave door and the fire he made his meal of raw flesh and plantains, and gazed out contemplatively over the vast, rankly-green landscapebelow him, musing upon the savage and monstrous strife which went onbeneath that mask of wide-flung calm. And as he pondered, the firewhich he had subjugated was quietly doing his work for him. 

The result was beyond his utmost expectations. After judiciouscharring, the ends being turned continually in the glowing coals, herubbed away the charred portions between two stones, and found that hecould thus work up an evenly-rounded point. The point thus obtainedwas keen and hard; and as he balanced this new shaft in his hand herealized that its weight would add vastly to its power of penetration. When he tried a shot with it, he found that it flew farther andstraighter. It drove through the tough, fleshy leaf of the pricklypear as if it hardly noticed the obstruction. He fashioned himself ahalf-dozen more of these highly-efficient shafts, and then set outagain--this time down the ravine--to seek a living target for hispractice. 

The ravine was winding and of irregular width, terraced here and therewith broken ledges, here and there cut into by steep little narrowgullies. Its bottom was in part bare rock; but wherever there was anaccumulation of soil, and some tiny spring oozing up through thefissures, there the vegetation grew rank, starred with vivid blooms ofcanna and hibiscus. In many places the ledges were draped with a densecurtain of the flat-flowered, pink-and-gold mesembryanthemum. It was aregion well adapted to the ambuscading beasts; and Grôm movedstealthily as a panther, keeping for the most part along the upperledges, crouching low to cross the open spots, and slipping into coverevery few minutes to listen and peer and sniff. 

Presently he came to a spot which seemed to offer him every advantageas a place of ambush. It was a ledge some twenty feet above the valleylevel, with a sort of natural parapet behind which he could crouch, and, unseen, keep an eye on all the glades and runways below. Behindhim the rock-face was so nearly perpendicular that no enemy couldsteal upon him from the rear. He laid his club and his spear downbeside him, selected one of his best arrows, and hoped that a fat buckwould come by, or one of those little, spotted, two-toed horses whoseflesh was so prized by the people of the Caves. Such a prize would bea proof to all the tribe of the potency of his new weapon. 

For nearly an hour he waited, moveless, save for his ranging eyes, asthe rock on which he leaned. To a hunter like Grôm, schooled toinfinite patience, this was nothing. He knew that, in the woods, ifone waits long enough and keeps still enough, he is bound to seesomething interesting. At last it came. It was neither the fat bucknor the little two-toed horse with dapple hide, but a youngcow-buffalo. Grôm noticed at once that she was nervous and puzzled. She seemed to suspect that she was being followed and was undecidedwhat to do. Once she faced about angrily, staring into the covertsbehind her, and made as if to charge. Had she been an old cow, or abull, she would have charged; but her inexperience made herirresolute. She snorted, faced about again, and moved on, ears, eyesand wide nostrils one note of wrathful interrogation. She was wellwithin range, and Grôm would have tried a shot at her except for hisseasoned wariness. He would rather see, before revealing himself, whatfoe it was that dared to trail so dangerous a quarry. The buffalomoved on slowly out of range, and vanished down a runway; andimmediately afterwards the stealthy pursuer came in view. 

To Grôm's amazement, it was neither a lion nor a bear. It was a man, of his own tribe. And then he saw it was none other than the greatchief, Bawr himself, hunting alone after his haughty and daringfashion. Between Grôm and Bawr there was the fullest understanding, and Grôm would have whistled that plover-cry, his private signal, butfor the risk of interfering with Bawr's chase. Once more, therefore, he held himself in check; while Bawr, his eyes easily reading thetrail, crept on with the soundless step of a wild cat. 

But Grôm was not the only hunter lying in ambush in the sun-drenchedravine. Out from a bed of giant, red-blooming canna arose thediabolical, grinning head and monstrous shoulders of a saber-tooth, and stared after Bawr. Then the whole body emerged with a noiselessbound. For a second the gigantic beast stood there, with one pawuplifted, its golden-tawny bulk seeming to quiver in the downpour ofintense sunlight. It was a third as tall again at the shoulders as thebiggest Himalayan tiger, its head was flat-skulled like a tiger's, andits upper jaw was armed with two long, yellow, saber-like tusks, projecting downwards below the lower jaw. This appalling monsterstarted after Bawr with a swift, crouching rush, as silent, for allits weight, as if its feet were shod with thistledown. 

Grôm leapt to his feet with a wild yell of warning, at the same timeletting fly an arrow. In his haste the shaft went wide. Bawr, lookingover his shoulder, saw the giant beast almost upon him. With atremendous bound he gained the foot of a tree. Dropping his club andspear, he sprang desperately, caught a branch, and swung himselfupward. 

But the saber-tooth was already at his heels, before he had time toswing quite out of reach. The gigantic brute gathered itself for aspring which would have enabled it to pluck Bawr from his refuge likea ripe fig. But that spring was never delivered. With a roar of ragethe monster turned instead, and bit furiously at the shaft of an arrowsticking in its flank. Grôm's second shaft had flown true; and Bawr, greatly marveling, drew up his legs to a place of safety. 

With the fire of that deep wound in its entrails the saber-toothforgot all about its quarry in the tree. It had caught sight of Grômwhen he uttered his yell of warning, and it knew instantly whence thestrange attack had come. It bit off the protruding shaft; and then, fixing its dreadful eyes on Grôm, it ceased its snarling and camecharging for the ledge with a rush which seemed likely to carry itclear up the twenty-foot perpendicular of smooth rock. 

Grôm, enamored of the new weapon, forgot the spear which was likely tobe far more efficient at these close quarters. Leaning far out overthe parapet, he drew his arrow to the head and let drive just as themonster reared itself, open-jawed, at the wall. The pointed hickorywent down into the gaping gullet, and stood out some inches at theside of the neck. With a horrible coughing screech the monsterrecoiled, put its head between its paws, and tried to claw the anguishfrom its throat. But after a moment, seeming to realize that this wasimpossible, it backed away, gathered itself together, and sprang forthe ledge. It received another of Grôm's shafts deep in the chest, without seeming to notice the wound; and its impetus was so tremendousthat it succeeded in getting its fore-paws fixed upon the ledge. Clinging there, its enormous pale-green eyes staring straight intoGrôm's, it struggled to draw itself up all the way--an effort in whichit would doubtless have succeeded at once but for that first arrow inits entrails. The iron claws of its hinder feet rasped noisily on therock-face. 

Grôm dropped his bow beside him and reached for the spear. His handgrasped the club instead; but there was no time to change. Swingingthe stone-head weapon in air, he brought it down, with a grunt of hugeeffort, full upon one of those giant paws which clutched the edge ofthe parapet. Crushed and numbed, the grip of that paw fell away; butat the same moment one of the hinder paws got over the edge, andclung. And there the monster hung, its body bent in a contorted bow. 

Bawr, meanwhile, seeing Grôm's peril, had dropped from his tree, snatched up his spear and club, and rushed in to the rescue. It wascourage, this, of the finest, counting no odds; for down there on thelevel he would have stood no ghost of a chance had the beast turnedback upon him. Grôm yelled to him to keep away, and swung up his clubfor another shattering blow. But in that same moment the great glaringeyes filmed and rolled upwards; blood spouted from between the gapingjaws; and with a spluttering cough the monster lost its hold. It fell, with a soft but jarring thud, upon its back, and slowly rolled overupon its side, pawing the air aimlessly. The arrow in the throat haddone its work. 

With fine self-restraint Bawr refrained from striking, that he mightseem to usurp no share in Grôm's amazing achievement. He stood leaningupon his spear, calmly watching the last feeble paroxysm, till Grômcame scrambling down from the ledge and stood beside him. He took thebow and arrows, and examined them in silence. Then he turned upon Grômwith burning eyes. 

"You found the Fire for our people. You saved our people from thehordes of the Bow-legs. You have saved my life now, slaying themonster from very far off with these little sticks which you havemade. It is you who should be Chief, not I. "

Grôm laughed and shook his head. "Bawr is the better man of us two, "said he positively, "and he is a better chief. He governs the people, while I go away and think new things. And he is my friend. Look, Iwill teach him now this new thing. And we will make another just likeit, that when we return to the Caves Bawr also shall know how tostrike from very far off. "

With their rough-edged spear-heads of flint they set themselves to theskinning of the saber-tooth. Then they went back to the high plateau, where Bawr was taught to shoot a straight shaft. And on the followingday they returned to the fires of the tribe, carrying between them, shoulder high, slung upon their two spears, this first trophy of thebow, the monstrous head and hide of the saber-tooth. 

CHAPTER IX

THE DESTROYING SPLENDOR

I

To Grôm, hunting farther to the south of the Tribal Fires than he hadever ranged before, came suddenly a woman running, mad with fright, ababy clutched to her bosom. She fell at Grôm's feet, gibberingbreathlessly, and plainly imploring his protection. Both she and thechild were streaming with blood, and covered with strange cup-likewounds, as if the flesh had been gouged out of them with someirresistible circular instrument. 

Grôm swiftly fitted an arrow to his bow, and peered through the treesto see what manner of adversary the fugitive was like to bring uponhim. At the same time, he gave a piercing cry, which was answered atonce from some distance behind him. 

Having satisfied himself (the country being fairly open) that thewoman's pursuer, whatever it might be, was not close upon her heels, and that no immediate danger was in view, he turned his attention uponthe woman herself. She was not of his race, and he looked down uponher with cold aversion. At first glance he thought she was one of theBow-legs. But the color of her skin, where it could be seen for theblood, was different, being rather of a copper-red; and she wasneither so hairy on the body nor of so ape-like proportions. She wassufficiently hideous, however, and of some race plainly inferior tothe People of the Caves. The natural instinct of a Cave Man would havebeen to knock her and her offspring on the head without ceremony--aneffective method of guarding his more highly developed breed from themixture of an inferior blood. But Grôm, the Chief and the wise man, had many vague impulses moving him at times which were novel to thehuman play-fellows of Earth's childhood. He disliked hurting a womanor a child. He might, quite conceivably, have refused to concernhimself with the suppliant before him, and merely left her and herbaby to the chances of the jungle. But the peculiar character of herwounds interested him. She aroused his curiosity. Here was a newmystery for him to investigate. The woman was saved. 

Knowing a few words of the Bow-legs' tongue, which he had learned fromhis lame slave Ook-ootsk, he addressed the crouching woman, tellingher not to fear. The tongue was unintelligible to her, but the tonesof his voice seemed to reassure her. She sat up, revealing again theform of the little one, which she had been shielding with her hair andher bosom as if she feared the tall white hunter might dash its brainsout; and Grôm noted with keen interest that the child also had one ofthose terrible, cup-shaped wounds, almost obliterating its fat, copper-colored shoulder. He saw, also, that the woman's face, thoughuncomely, was more intelligent and human than the bestial faces of theBow-legs' women. It was a broad face, with very small, deep-set eyes, high cheek bones, a tiny nose, and a very wide mouth, and it looked asif some one had sat on it hard and pushed it in. The idea made himsmile, and the smile completed the woman's reassurance. She poured astream of chatter quite unlike the clicks and barkings of theBow-legs. Then she crept closer to Grôm's feet, and proceeded to giveher little one the breast. It was twisting uneasily with the pain ofits dreadful wound, but it nursed hungrily, and with the prudentstoicism of a wild creature it made no outcry. 

As Grôm stood studying the pair, the mother kept throwing glances ofhorror over her shoulder, as if expecting her assailants to arrive atany moment. Grôm followed her eyes, but there was no sign of anypursuit. Then he observed the fugitives' wounds more closely, andnoted that the blood upon them was already, in most cases, pretty wellcoagulated. He noted also certain other wounds, deep, narrowpunctures, like stabs. He guessed that they could not be much lessthan an hour old. The Thing, whatever it was, which had inflictedthem--the Thing with so strange a mouth, and so strange a way of usingit--had apparently given up the pursuit. Grôm's curiosity burnedwithin him, and he was angry at the woman because she could not speakto him in his own language, or at least in that of the Bow-legs. Itseemed to him willful obstinacy on her part to refuse to understandthe Bow-legs' tongue. He stooped over her, and roughly examined one ofthe wounds with his huge fingers. She winced, but made no complaint, only covering her baby with her hair and her arms in terror lest itshould suffer a like harsh handling. 

With a qualm of compunction, which rather puzzled him, Grôm gave overhis investigating, and turned to a tall, slim youth with a great mopof chestnut hair who at this moment came running up to him. It wasA-ya's young brother, Mô, Grôm's favorite follower and hunting mate;and he had come at speed, being very swift of foot, in answer toGrôm's signal. Breathing quickly, he stood at Grôm's side, and lookeddown with wonder and dislike upon the crouching woman. 

Briefly Grôm explained, and then pointed to the inexplicable wounds. The youth, unable to believe that any human creature should be unableto comprehend plain human speech, such as that of the Cave People, tried his own hand at questioning the woman. He got a flow of chatterin reply, but, being able to make nothing out of it, he imagined itwas not speech at all, and turned away angrily, thinking that shemocked him. Grôm, smiling at the mistake, explained that the woman wastalking her own language, which he intended presently to learn as hehad learned that of the Bow-legs. 

"But now, " said he, "we will go and see what it is that has bitten thewoman. It is surely something with a strange mouth. "

Mô, who was not only brave to recklessness, but who would havefollowed Grôm through the mouth of hell, sprang forward eagerly. Grôm, who realized that the mystery before him was a perilous one, and wholoved to do dangerous things in a prudent manner, looked to hisbow-string and saw that his arrows were handy in his girdle, before hestarted on the venture. Besides his bow he carried the usual twospears and his inseparable stone-headed club. Though danger was hisdelight, it was not the danger itself but the thrill of overcoming itthat he loved. 

The moment he stepped forward, however, the woman divined his purposeand leapt wildly to her feet. She sprang straight in front of him, screaming and gesticulating. She was plainly horror-stricken at thethought that the two men should venture into the perils from which shehad so hardly escaped. To Grôm's keen intelligence her gestures wereeloquent. She managed to convey to him the idea of great numbers, andthe impossibility of his dealing with them. When he attempted to passher, she threw herself down and clung to his feet, shaking with herterror. When she saw that Grôm was at last impressed, she stretchedherself out as if dead, and then, after a few moments of ghastlyrigidity, with fixed, staring eyes, she came to and held up one handwith the fingers outspread. 

This frantic pantomime Grôm could read in no other way than as anattempt to tell him that the unknown Something had killed five of thewoman's companions. The information gave him pause. Adventurous as hewas, he had small respect for mere pig-headed recklessness. He wasresolved to solve the problem--but after all it could abide his morethorough preparation. 

"Come back, " he ordered, turning to the impetuous Mô. "She says theyare too many for us two. They have killed five of her people. We willgo back to the Caves, and after three sleeps for good counsel, we willreturn with fire and find the destroying Thing. "

II

On their return to the Caves, Grôm gave the strange woman and her babyto his faithful slave Ook-ootsk, who accepted the gift with enthusiasmbecause, being a Bow-leg, he had not been allowed to take any of theCave Women to wife. He lavished his attentions upon the unhappystranger, but he could make no more of her speech than Grôm had done. The girl A-ya, however, in a moment of peculiar insight had gathered, or thought she gathered, from the stranger's signs, that the dreadfuland destroying Thing was something that flew--therefore, a greatflesh-eating bird. But she gathered, also, that it was something whichin some way bore a resemblance to fire--for the woman, after gettingover her first terror of the dancing flames, kept pointing to them andthen to her wounds in a most suggestive way. This, however, as Grômrather scornfully pointed out, was too absurd. There was nothing thatcould be in the least like fire itself; and the wounds of thefugitives had no likeness whatever to the corrosive bites of theflame. A-ya took the correction submissively, but held her ownthought; and when a day or two later, events proved her to have beenright, she discreetly refrained from calling her lord's attention tothe fact--a point upon which Grôm was equally reserved. 

With so provocative a mystery waiting to be solved, Grôm could notlong rest idle. Had she not known well it would be a waste ofbreath, A-ya would have tried to dissuade him from the perilous, andto her mind profitless, adventure. It was one she shrank from inspite of her tried courage and her unwavering trust in Grôm's prowess. The mystery of it daunted her. She feared it in the same way thatshe feared the dark. But she kept her fears to herself, and claimedher long-established right to go with Grôm on the expedition. Grômwas willing enough, for there was no one whose readiness and nerve, ina supreme crisis, he could so depend upon, and he wanted her close athand with her fire-basket. There was nothing to keep her at home, asthe children were looked after by Ook-ootsk. 

It was a very little party which started southward from theCaves--simply Grôm, A-ya, young Mô, and a dwarfish kinsman of Grôm's, named Loob, who was the swiftest runner in the tribe and noted for hiscunning as a scout. He could go through underbrush like a shadow, andhide where there was apparently no hiding-place, making himselfindistinguishable from the surroundings like a squatting partridge. Each one carried a bow, two light spears, and a club--except A-ya, whohad no club, and only one spear. The weapon she chiefly relied uponwas the bow, which she loved with passion. She considered herself theinventor of it; and in the accuracy of her shooting she outdid evenGrôm. In addition to these weapons, each member of the party exceptthe leader himself carried a fire-basket, in which a mass of red coalsmixed with punk smouldered in a bed of moist clay. 

The little expedition traveled Indian file, Grôm leading the way, withA-ya at his heels, then Loob the Scout, and young Mô bringing up therear. They had started about dawn, when the first of the morning rosewas just beginning to pale the cave-mouth fires. They traveledswiftly, but every two hours or so they would make a brief halt besidea spring to drink and breathe themselves and to look to the preciousfires in the fire-baskets. When it wanted perhaps an hour of noon, they came to a little patch of meadow surrounding a solitaryJudas-tree covered with bloom. Here they built a fire, for thereplenishing of the coals in the fire-baskets, and as a menace toprowling beasts. Then they dined on their sun-dried meat and on ripeplantains gathered during the journey. Having dined, the three youngermembers of the party stretched themselves out in the shade for theirnoon sleep, while Grôm, whose restless brain never suffered him tosleep by day, kept watch, and pondered the adventure which lay beforethem. 

As Grôm sat there, ten or a dozen paces from the fire, absorbed in thought, his eyes gradually focussed themselves upon a big purple-and-lemon orchidbloom, which glowed forth conspicuously from the rank greenjungle-growth fringing the meadow. The gorgeous bloom seemed to rise out ofa black, curiously gnarled elbow of branch or trunk which thrust itself outthrough the leafage. Grôm's eyes dwelt for a time, unheeding, upon thispiece of misshapen tree trunk. Suddenly he saw the blackness wink. Hisstartled vision cleared itself instantly, and revealed to him the hideous, two-horned mask of a black rhinoceros, peering forth just under theorchid blossom. 

Grôm's first impulse was to wake the sleepers with a yell and shepherdthem to refuge in the tree--for the gigantic woolly rhinoceros, withhis armor of impenetrable hide, was a foe whom Man had not yet learnedto handle with any certainty. But a deeper instinct held Grômmotionless. He knew that the monster, whose eyesight was always dimand feeble, could not see him distinctly, and was in all probabilitystaring in stupid wonder at the dancing flames of the camp-fire. Aslong as no smell of man should reach the brute's sensitive nostrils torouse its rage, it was not likely to charge. There was no wind, andthe air about him was full of the spicy bitterness of the wood-smoke. Grôm decided that the safest thing was to keep perfectly still andwait for the next move in the game to come from the monster. Hedevoutly trusted that the sleepers behind him were sleeping soundly, and that no one would wake and sit up to attract the monster'sattention. 

Grôm could now see plainly that it was the fire, and not himself, which the rhinoceros was staring at. The shifting flames, and thesmell of the smoke, apparently puzzled it. After a moment or two, ittook a step forward, so that half of its huge, black, shaggy bulkprojected from the banked greenery as from a frame. Then it stoodmotionless, blinking its little malignant eyes, till the silentsuspense grew to be a strain even upon Grôm's well-seasoned nerves. 

At last a large stick, laid across the fire, burned through and fellapart. The flames leapt upwards with redoubled vigor, preceded by avolley of crackling sparks. Knowing the temper of the rhinoceros, Grômexpected it to fly into a fury and charge upon the fire at once. Hismouth opened, indeed, for the yell of warning which should wake thesleepers and send them leaping into the tree. But he checked himselfin time. The monster, for once in its life, seemed to be abashed. Thecurling red flames were too elusive a foe for it. With a grunt ofuneasiness, it drew back into the leafage; and in a moment or two Grômheard the giant bulk crashing off through the jungle at a gallop. Theunwonted sensation of alarm, once yielded to, had swollen to a panic, and the dull-witted brute fled on for a mile or more before it couldforget the cause of its terror. 

That afternoon toward sundown the expedition reached the point wherethe fugitive had made her appeal to Grôm. For fear of givinginformation to the unknown enemy, no fires were lighted. The night waspassed in a dense and lofty tree-top. For Grôm, strung up withexcitement, suspense and curiosity, there was little sleep. For themost part he perched on his woven platform with his arms about hisknees, listening to the sounds of the night--the occasional suddenrush of a hunting beast, the agonized scream and scuffle, thegurglings and noisy slaverings that told of the unseen tragediesenacted far down in the murderous dark. But there was no sound novelto his own experience. Once there came a scratching of claws and asniffing at the base of the tree. 

But Grôm dropped a live coal from his fire-basket, and chanced to makea lucky shot. With a snarl some heavy body bounced away from the tree. The coal then fell into a tuft of dry grass, which flared up suddenly. Grôm had a glimpse of huge shapes and startled, savage eyes backingaway from the circle of light. The blaze died down as quickly as ithad arisen; and thereafter the night prowlers kept at a distance fromthe tree. But the sleepers had all been thoroughly aroused and tilldawn they sat discussing, for the hundredth time, the chances of themorrow's venture. 

Before the sun was clear of the horizon, the little party was againupon the march, but now going with the wariness of a sable. They nolonger went Indian file, but flitting singly from tree to tree, fromcovert to covert, Grôm picking up the old trail of the fugitive, therest of the party keeping him in view and peering ahead for some signof the unknown Terror. The red woman in her flight had left a sharptrail enough; but in the lapse of three days it had been soobliterated that all Grôm's wood-craft was needed to decipher it, andhis progress was slow. He began to be puzzled at the absence of anyother trail, of any footsteps of a mysterious, unknown monster. Suchtracks as crossed those of the fugitive, however terrible, were allfamiliar to his eye. 

Suddenly he almost stumbled over a hideous sight. A low whistlebrought his followers closing in upon him. The skeleton of afull-grown man lay outstretched in the grass. The bones werefresh--bloodstained and bright--and a swarm of blood-sucking insectsarose from them. They were picked minutely clean, except for a portionof the skull, where the long, strong, densely matted hair seemed tohave served as an effective armor. The bones were not pulled about, orcrushed for their marrow, as they would have been if the victim hadbeen the prey of any of the great carnivorous beasts. And there wereno tracks about it save those of a few small rat-like creatures. Itwas clear that the Mystery, whatever it might be, had wings. 

"A bird!" whispered A-ya, with a gleam of triumph in her eyes, at thesame time glancing up into the tree-tops apprehensively. But Grôm didnot think so. There were no marks of mighty claws on the turf aroundthe skeleton. 

Grôm cast about him an eager but anxious eye. The country was notdensely wooded at this point, but studded with low thickets, and sethere and there with scattered trees. From a little way ahead came agleam of calm water through the greenery. It was a scene of peace, andsecurity, and summer loveliness. Its very beauty seemed to Grôm anadded menace, as if some peculiar treachery must lurk behind it. 

In the center of an open glade, not far from the skeleton, Grôm sethis party to building a circle of fires, as likely to afford thesurest kind of a refuge. A supply of fuel having been gathered, hedirected A-ya and Mô to remain and tend the fires and not to leave thecircle unless he should summon them. Loob, the cunning scout, he sentoff to the left through the underbrush. He himself followed the trailof the fugitive--now doubled by that of the other fugitive whoseskeleton lay there in the sun--down toward that gleam of water throughthe trees. A-ya gazed after him anxiously as he vanished, half mindedto dare his displeasure and follow him. 

Grôm was presently able to make out that the water was a wide, reedylake or the arm of a shallow river. There was no wind, and the surfaceshone like clear glass. But once and again his eyes were dazzled by adart of intense radiance, a great flash of rose or violet orblue-green flame, shooting over the surface of the water. A memory ofwhat A-ya had professed to gather from the stranger woman rushed intohis mind. Perhaps the Destroying Thing was like a bird, andnevertheless, at the same time, something like fire. He felt himselfconfronted by a mystery which made even his tried nerves creep; and hehid himself in the densest undergrowth as he stole forward toward thewater. He had forgotten, and forsaken, the trail he was following, inhis haste to solve the problem of those darting splendors. 

A few moments more and he gained the edge of an open glade which ledstraight to the water. He paused behind the screening leaves. Out overthe water a bar of ruby light, surrounded by a globe of rose-pinkmist, shot by and vanished from his narrow field of vision. He wasjust about to thrust out his head and crane his neck to follow thegorgeous apparition, when a peculiar dry rustling in the air abovechecked him. He glanced up cautiously, and saw hovering, not more thantwenty or thirty yards away, a beautiful and dreadful being. 

In shape it was exactly like a dragon-fly; but the length of itsflaming violet body was greater than that of Grôm's longest arrow. Thespread of its two pairs of transparent, crystal-shining, colorlesswings was even greater than the length of its body. Its enormous eyes, wells of purple fire which took up the whole of the top and sides ofits monstrous head, seemed to see everywhere at once; and Grômshivered with the feeling that they had spied him out and were peeringinto his very soul. 

The awful eyes may have seen him, indeed; but at that moment theyspied out something else which apparently concerned them more. With apounce like a flash of violet lightning--and, indeed, almost asswift--the bright shape swooped to the grass. The four shining wingswaved there for a moment, and there seemed to be a mild struggle. Thenthe giant fly rose again, lightly, into the air, holding in the clutchof its six slender, jointed legs the body of one of those black, rat-like animals which Grôm knew so well as infesting the grass of allmeadows near the water. The captor flew to a naked branch near thewaterside, alighted upon it, and proceeded to make its meal, holdingup the body between the end joints of its front pair of legs andturning it over and over deftly while its appalling jaws both crushedand mangled it. The process was amazingly swift. In the space of acouple of minutes all the blood, flesh, and soft material of the ratwere squeezed out and sucked down. The remnants were rolled into ahard little ball, perfectly spherical, and scornfully tossed aside. And the monster, leaping into the air with a rustle of its glitteringwings, flashed off over the water. 

Almost in the same moment an amazingly loud rustle, like the sweep ofa fierce gust of rain upon a rank of palmetto leaves, filled the airabove the glade, and Grôm, looking up with a start, saw a great shoalof the radiant shapes storm by, as if with the rainbow entangled intheir wings. He wondered upon what foray they were bent; and now forthe first time he realized, with a creeping of the flesh, what it wasthat had overtaken the man whose skeleton he had found in the grass. The shoal swept out over the lake a little way, and then down theshore toward the left; and Grôm drew a long breath as he assuredhimself that their course was taking them far from the fires of A-yaand Mô. 

When Grôm lowered his eyes to earth again he started. On the side ofthe stump of a fallen tree, out in the glade not more than eight orten yards distant, clung one of the monsters, scintillating blue-greenand amethyst in the full blaze of the sun. Its wings, exquisitelynetted and of crystal transparency, were tinged with an ineffablepurple iridescence. Its jointed body, slightly longer than Grôm's arm, was nearly as thick as his wrist, and ended at the tail with aformidable double claw. Its six legs, arranged in three pairs underthe thorax, were armed on the inner sides with powerful spines, needle-pointed and steel hard, with which to grip and hold itsvictims. The thorax, from the back of which sprouted the four greatwings, was of the thickness of Grôm's forearm, while its head was asbig as Grôm's two great fists put together. It was this head whichheld Grôm's fascinated gaze, giving him more of the sensation of coldfear than he had ever known before. More than two-thirds of the headconsisted of a pair of huge, globose eyes, without pupil, ethereallytransparent, yet unfathomable. From the depths of them flamed aceaselessly changing radiance of blue-green, purple and violet. Grômfound the stare of those blank, pupilless eyes almost intolerable. 

It was plainly straight at him, through the ineffectual screen of theleafage, that the dreadful insect was staring. At first it stared withthe back of its head. Then, very deliberately, it turned its headcompletely around, without moving its body a hair-breadth, till itsmouth was in the same plane with its back. This gave Grôm a sense ofdisgust, and his shrinking dread began to give way to a sort of rage. 

Then he took note of the monster's mouth--and understood those greatcup-shaped wounds on the woman and the child. The mouth took up theremaining third of the head, and seemed to consist of globular discsworking one over the other, so as either to cut cleanly or to grind. They were working, slowly, now--and Grôm felt suddenly that he mustput a stop to it, that he must put out the awful light in thosemonstrous devil eyes. Stealthily, almost imperceptibly, he fitted anarrow to his bow, raised it, drew it, and took a long, steady aim. Hemust not miss. The shaft flew--and the great fly was pinned, throughthe thorax, to the soft, rotten wood of its perch. 

To Grôm's horror that stroke, which to any beast he knew would have atonce been fatal, did not kill the monstrous fly. Its struggles, andthe beating of its four great wings were so violent that thearrow-head was presently wrenched loose from its hold in the wood, andthe raging splendor, with the shaft half-way through its thorax, bounded into the air. It darted straight at Grôm, who had prudentlyedged in among a tangle of stems. Its fury carried it through thescreen of leafage--but then, its wings impeded by the branches, andthe arrow hampering it, it dashed itself to the earth. Instantly Grômwas upon it, stamping its slim body, as it lay there blazing andquivering, into the soil. The violet light in the huge, pupilless eyesstill stared up at him implacable, from a head turned squarely overthe back. But in a cold fury Grôm shattered the gleaming head with hisclub. Then he trod the silver wings to dust. 

Having slaked his wrath effectually, Grôm turned to stare forth againat those destroying splendors darting and glittering above the surfaceof the lake. To his surprise there were no more of them to be seen. Then far off down the shore he heard the voice of Loob, shouting forhelp. The shouting changed at once to a scream of terror, and Grômstarted to the rescue on the full run--taking care, however, to keepwithin cover of the thickets. But before he had gone a quarter of amile he heard A-ya's voice calling him, wildly, insistently, mingledwith excited yells from Mô. He shouted in reply and dashed madly forthe fires. The peril of A-ya put all other considerations out of hismind. 

As he burst forth into the glade of refuge, he saw A-ya and young Môleaping about frantically among their fires, now trying to stir thefires to a fiercer blaze, now beating upwards with their spears, whileabove them darted and gleamed and swooped and scintillated, with ahorrid dry rustling of their silver wings, shoal upon shoal of thedevouring monsters. As he burst into the open, with a great shout ofencouragement, something dropped upon him. He felt his head instantlycaged by six steel-like legs which gripped like jaws, their spinessinking deep into the flesh of neck and cheek. He reached up his lefthand, caught his dreadful assailant just where the head and thoraxjoin, and strove to throttle it. This was impossible, by reason of theinsect's armor, but he succeeded in holding off those horrid jaws fromhis face as he dashed for the circle. Another monster swooped andstruck its spines into his back, and bit a great mouthful out of hisshoulder. But he gained the fires, and, holding his breath, sprangright through the fiercest flame. The wings of his assailantsshrivelled instantly, and the flame, drawn into the mouth of theirbreathing tubes, sealed them up. Grôm tore them off, and slammed thewrithing, wingless bodies into the fire. 

Inside the circle, now that the fires were burning high, it waspossible to defend oneself effectually, as the bulk of the assailantsseemed to realize that the flames were fatal to their frail wings. Butthere were enough so headlong in their ferocity that both Grôm and Môwere kept busy beating them off with spears, while A-ya fed the fires;and the ground inside the circle was littered with the radiant bodiesof the dying insects, which, even in dying, bit like bull-dogs if footor leg came within reach. Grôm noticed that their supply of fuel wasall but gone, and his heart sank. He measured with his eyes thedistance to the nearest thickets that looked dense enough for ashelter. 

"We'll have to run for those bushes, " he said presently. "They can'tfly in where the branches are thick. It breaks their wings. "

"Good, " said young Mô. But A-ya, whose shapely shoulders and thighswere already covered with hideous wounds, trembled at the prospect. 

At that moment, however an amazing change came over the scene. A blackthunder-cloud passed across the face of the sun. The moment thesunshine vanished the destroyers seemed to forget their fury. All thelife and energy went out of them. They simply flocked to the nearesttrees and hung themselves up, gigantic, jewelled blooms, upon thebranches. In less than a minute every dreadful wing was stilled. 

"Now is our time. Come!" commanded Grôm, leading the way out of thecircle. 

"Let's stop and kill them all!" pleaded young Mô, his eyes red withrage. 

But Grôm pointed to the cloud. "It will pass quickly, " said he. "Wemust be far from here before the sun shows his face again. "

He paused, however, to transfix upon his spear-head one of theirwounded but still fluttering foes, that he might be able to show thetribe what manner of monsters they had had to deal with. Both A-ya andMô followed his example; and they all ran off down the glade searchingfor Loob, whom they soon found and bearing their strange trophies ontheir spear-heads they went on. The monsters, clinging sullenly totheir perches, rolled baleful eyes of emerald and rose and amethystupon them as they went, but lifted never a wing to follow them. Tenminutes later the sun came out again. Then the monsters all spranghurtling into the air, and darted hither and thither above the gladein shoals of iridescent radiance, seeking their prey. But Grôm andA-ya, Mô and Loob triumphant in spite of their wounds, were by thistime far away among the inland thickets, where those intolerable eyescould not search them out, nor the clashing wings pursue. 

CHAPTER X

THE TERRORS OF THE DARK

I

From the topmost summit of that range of pointed hills which held thecaves and the cave-mouth fires of his people, Grôm stared northwardwith keen curiosity. To east and south and west he had explored, everseeking to enlarge the knowledge and strengthen the security of histribe. But to northward of the pointed hills lay league on league ofprofound jungle--grotesque and enormous growths knitted togetherimpenetrably by a tangle of gigantic, flame-flowered lianas. And inthose rank, green glooms, as Grôm had reason to believe, there lurkedsuch monsters as even he, with all his resources of fire and novelweapons, had so far shrunk from challenging. 

But beyond the expanse of jungle stretched another line of hills, their summits not saw-toothed like his own, but low and gentlyrounded, and of a smoky purple against the pure turquoise sky. Thesehills Grôm was thirsting to explore. They might contain caves moreroomy than those of his own hills--spacious and suitable to giveshelter to his tribe, which was now finding itself somewhat cramped. Moreover, it had always seemed to Grôm that there might be a mysterybehind those hills, and to his restless imagination a mystery wasalways like a stinging goad. 

In all this neighborhood the crust of earth was thin as plainlyappeared from the fringe of wavering volcanic flames which, during allthe five years since the coming of the tribe, had been dancing fromthe lip of the narrow fissure across the mouth of their valley. Nightand day, now high and vehement, now low and faint, they had dancedthere, guarding the valley entrance--until just one moon ago. Then hadcome an earthquake, shaking the hearts of all the tribe to water. Thedancing flames had died. The fissure had closed up, and its place hadbeen taken by a pool of boiling pitch. And one of the caves had fallenin, burying several members of the tribe, who had been too stupefiedwith panic to flee into the open at the first alarm. For some daysafter this catastrophe the tribe had camped in the open, huddled abouttheir great fires. Then, but with deep misgivings, they had allcrowded back into the remaining caves. 

But now there was not room enough, and Bawr, the wise Chief, had takenfrequent counsel upon the matter with Grôm, whom, loving him greatlyhe called sometimes his Right Hand and sometimes the Eye of thePeople. At last, it had been settled that Grôm should lead a partythrough the jungle land to those other hills, to spy out the prospect. And Grôm, like the foresighted leader that he was, had spent manyhours on the mountain-top, planning his route and studying theluxuriant surface of the jungle outstretched below him, beforeplunging into its mysterious depths. 

As was his custom when on a perilous venture, Grôm would have fewfollowers to share the peril with him. He took A-ya, not only becauseof her oft-proved courage and resourcefulness, not only because hewanted her always at his side, but, above all, because he knew hecould not leave her behind. Had he tried to leave her, she would havedisobeyed and followed him by stealth--and perhaps fallen a prey toprowling beasts. He took also A-ya's young brother, the hot-head Mô;and Loob, the shaggy, little sharp-faced scout, who could run like ahare, hide like a fox, and fight like a cornered weasel. This he wouldhave accounted, ordinarily, a sufficient party. But the presententerprise being one of peculiar difficulty, he decided at the lastmoment to strengthen his following by the addition of a dark-faced, perpetually-grinning giant named Hobbo, who was slow of wit, butthewed like a bull, and a mighty fighter with the stone-headed club. 

This little but greatly daring band, which Grôm, one flaming sunrise, led down into the unknown jungle, was well armed. Besides the spearand the club, each member of the party but Hobbo (who had displayed noaptitude for its use) carried Grôm's wonderful invention--the bow. Hobbo, however, because of his immense strength, bore the heavyfire-basket, wherein the smoldering coals were cherished in a bed ofclay. As a food reserve, everyone carried a few strips of half-driedmeat; but their main dependence, of course, was to be upon the spoilsof their hunting and the fruits that they might gather on theirmarch. 

The forest into whose depths Grôm now led the way was in reality asurvival from a previous age, into which the forms, both vegetable andanimal, of contemporary life had been gradually infiltrating. Thesoil, of incredible fertility, still poured forth those gigantic treegrasses, and colossal, sappy ferns and psuedo-palms, which hadflourished chiefly in the carboniferous period. But here they weremingled with the more enduring hard-wood growths of the later tropicalforests; and only these were strong enough to support the massive, strangling coils of the cable-like lianas, which wound their way upthe huge trunks and reached out in aërial, swaying bridges fromtree-top to tree-top. On every side, high or low, the deep-green gloomwas splashed with color from the gorgeous orchids and other epiphytes, which flowered out into grotesque or monstrous wing-petaled shapes ofvermilion and purple and orange and rose and white, eyed with velvetblack or streaked with iridescent bronze. 

To men of to-day this jungle would have been impenetrable, except bythe incessant use of axe or machete. But Grôm and his party wereCave-Men, and had not yet forgotten all the instincts and capacitiesof their tree-dwelling ancestors. Sometimes, where it seemed easiest, they forced their way along the ground, or followed the trodden trailof some great jungle beast, so long as it led in the right direction. But here they had to be ceaselessly on the watch against surprise bycreatures whose monstrous tracks were unlike any that they had everseen before. Whenever possible, therefore, they preferred to journey, after the fashion of their apish ancestors, by way of the highbranches and the liana bridges. Hampered as they were by theirweapons, their progress by this aërial way was slow. But it wascomparatively secure. And it was also comparatively cool; while downat the ground-level the steaming heat and the stinging insects werealmost beyond endurance. 

Yet before the end of that first day's journey they learned that evenin tree-tops it was necessary to be always on the watch. Once thelittle hairy scout, Loob, who traveled always on the outskirts of theparty, was struck at suddenly by a huge black leopard, which layambushed in the crotch of a tree. Loob, however, who was soquick-sighted that he seemed to see things before they actuallyhappened, leapt to a higher branch in time to escape the deadlypaw. In the next instant he struck down furiously with his spear, catching his assailant between the shoulder-blades and driving thestroke home with all his strength. With a screech, the beast stiffenedout, and then, somewhat slowly, collapsed. As Loob wrenched hisweapon free, the great animal slumped limply from its branch. For amoment or two it hung by the fore-paws, coughing and frothing atthe mouth. Then this last hold relaxed and it fell, bumping with acurious deliberation from branch to branch. It vanished through afloor of thick leafage, and struck the ground with a dull crash. Itmust have fallen under the very jaws of an unseen waiting monster; forthere arose at once a strange, hooting roar, followed by the soundof rending flesh and cracking bone. Loob grinned over his feat, and Grôm, glancing at A-ya, muttered quietly: "It is better to be uphere than down there. " As he spoke, and they all peered downwards, a dreadful head, with the limp body of the leopard gripped like arat between its long jaws and dripping yellow fang, thrust itselfup through the floor of leafage and stared at them with round eyesas cold and black as ice. 

Grôm itched to shoot an arrow into one of those unwinking, devilisheyes. But arrows were too precious to be wasted. 

That night they slept profoundly on a platform which they wove ofbranches in one of the tallest and most unscalable trees. They keptwatch, of course, turn and turn about; but nothing attempted toapproach them, and they cared little for the sounds of strife, thecrashings of pursuit and desperate flight, which came up to them atintervals from the blackness far below. 

On the morrow, however, as they were pursuing their aërial path alongthe borders of a narrow, sluggish bayou, they were suddenly made torealize that the tree-tops held perils more deadly than that of thelurking leopards. They were all staring down into the water, whichswarmed with gigantic crocodiles and boiled immediately beneath themwith the turmoil of a life-and-death struggle between two of thebrutes, when harsh jabbering in the branches just across the watermade them look up. 

The tree-tops opposite were full of great apes, mowing and gibberingat them with every sign of hate. The beasts were as big and massive asHobbo himself, and covered thickly with long, blackish fur. Theirfaces, half human, half dog-like, were hairless and of a bright butbilious blue, with great livid red circles about the small, furiouseyes. With derisive gestures they swung themselves out upon theoverhanging branches, till it almost seemed as if they would hurlthemselves into the water in their rage against the little knot ofhuman beings. 

The girl A-ya, overcome with loathing horror because the beasts wereso hideous a caricature of man, covered her eyes with one hand. YoungMô, his fiery temper stung by their challenge, clapped an arrow to hisstring and raised his bow to shoot. But Grôm checked him sternly, dreading to fix any thirst of vengeance in the minds of the terribletroop. 

"They can't come at us here. Let them forget about us, " said he. "Don't take any more notice of them at all. "

As he led the way once more through the branches along the edge of thebayou, the apes kept pace with them on the other side. But presentlythe bayou widened, and then swept sharply off to the west. Grôm kepton straight to the north, by the route which he had planned. And themad gibbering died away into the hot, green silence of the tree-tops. 

The adventurers now pushed on with redoubled speed, unwilling to passanother night in the tree-tops when such dangerous antagonists were inthe neighborhood. The hills, however, were still far off when eveningcame again. Not knowing that the great apes always slept at night, Grôm decided to continue the journey in order to lessen the risk of asurprise. When the moon rose, round and huge and honey-colored, overthe sea of foliage, traveling through the tree-tops was almost as easyas by day, while the earth below them, with its prowling and battlingmonsters, was buried in inky gloom. When day broke, there were therounded hills startlingly close ahead, as if they had crept forward tomeet them in the night. 

And now the hills looked different. Between the nearest--a long, rolling, treeless ridge of downland--and the edge of the junglelay an expanse of open, grassy savannah, dotted with ponds, andhere and there a curious, solitary, naked tree-trunk, with whatlooked like a bunch of grass on its top. They were like giganticgreen paint-brushes, with yellow-gray handles, stuck up at random. Far off they saw a herd of curious beasts at pasture, and away tothe left a giant bird, as tall as the tree by which it stood, seemedto keep watch. A little to the right, where the treeless ridge cameabruptly to an end, gleamed a considerable stretch of water. It wastoward this point, where the water washed the steep-shoulderedpromontory, that Grôm decided to shape his course across the plain. 

By the time the sun was some three hours high they had arrived withina couple of hundred yards of the open. Sick of the oppressive jungle, and eager for the change to a type of country with which they weremore familiar, they were swinging on through the tree-tops at a greatpace, when that savage, snarling jabber which they so dreaded washeard in the branches behind them. Grôm instantly put A-ya in thelead, while he himself dropped to the rear to meet this deadliest ofperils. There was no need to urge his party to haste; but it seemed tothem all as if they were standing still, so swiftly did the clamor ofthe apes come upon them. 

"Down to earth, " ordered Grôm sharply, seeing that they must beovertaken before they could reach the open, and realizing that in thetree-tops they could not hope to match these four-handed dwellers ofthe trees. 

As they dropped nimbly from branch to branch, the foremost of the apesarrived in sight, set up a screech of triumph, and came swooping downafter them in vast, swinging leaps. In the hurry Hobbo dropped hisfire-basket, which broke as it fell and scattered the precious coals. Grôm, guarding the rear of the flight, made the mistake of keeping hiseye too much on the enemy, too little on where he was going. In amoment or two, he found himself cut off, upon a branch from whichthere was no escape without a drop of twenty feet to a most uncertainfoothold. Rather than risk it, he ran in upon his nearest assailant atthe base of the branch, thrusting at the blue-faced beast with hisspear. But his position being so insecure, his thrust lacked force andprecision. The great ape caught it deftly; and Grôm, to preserve hisbalance, had to let the spear be wrenched from his hand. At the samemoment another ape dropped on the branch behind him. 

For just one second Grôm thought his hour had come. He crouched tosteady himself, then darted forward and hurled his club straight athis foe's protruding and shaggy paunch. Again the beast caught themissile in its lightning clutch; but in the next instant it threw upits long arms, without a sound, and fell backwards out of the tree. A-ya, who had been the first to reach the ground, had drawn her bowand shot upwards with sure aim. The shaft had caught the great apeunder the center of the jaw, far back at the throat, and piercedstraight up to the brain. 

Surprised at seeing their leader fall with so little apparent reason, the other apes halted for a moment in their onset, chattering noisily. In that moment Grôm swung himself to the ground. As he reached it bothMô and Loob discharged their arrows. Another ape fell from his perch, but caught himself on a lower branch and hung there writhing; while athird, with a shaft half buried in his paunch, fled back yelling intothe tree-top. Then the adventurers snatched up their fallen weaponsfrom the ground and made for the open as fast as they could run. Andthe apes, with a hellish uproar of barks and screams, came swarmingafter them through the lower branches. 

At this point, fortunately for the travelers, the jungle was alreadythinning, and they had a chance to show their speed. The ragingblue-faces were speedily distanced, and the fugitives ran outbreathless upon the sunny savannah. Here, feeling themselves safe, they halted to look back. The lower branches all along the edge of thegrass were thronged with leaping brown forms, and gnashing blue masks, and red-rimmed, devilish eyes. But not one of the great beasts, forall their rage, seemed willing to venture forth into the open. 

"There must be something out here that they fear greatly, " commentedGrôm, peering warily about him. But there was nothing in sight tosuggest any danger, and he led the way onward through the rank grassat a long, leisurely trot. 

II

For the most part the grass grew hardly waist high; but here and therewere patches, perhaps an acre or so in extent, where it was more canethan grass and rose to a height of twelve or fifteen feet. To suchpatches, which might serve as lurking-places to unknown monsters, Grômgave a wide berth. He had a vivid remembrance of that colossal head, with the awful dead eyes, which had reared itself through the leafageto stare up at him. 

In spite of the strange and enormous trails which crossed their pathat times; in spite of occasional massive swayings and crashings in thedeep beds of cane, the adventurous party accomplished the journeyacross the savannah without encountering a single foe. The mid-noonblaze of the sun upon the windless grass, which was almost more thanthey could endure, was probably keeping the monsters to their lairs;and the only living things to be seen, besides the insects and ahigh-wheeling vulture or two, were a few shy troops of a kind of smallantelope, incredibly swift of foot. 

Grôm drew a breath of relief as they reached the foot of the hills. But just here it was impossible to climb them. A range of highlimestone downs, they were fringed at this point by an unbroken lineof cliff, perpendicular and at times overhanging, from forty or fiftyto perhaps a couple of hundred feet in height, and so smooth that eventhese goat-footed cave-folk could not scale them. The rich plain-landat their feet had once been a shallow, inland sea, and now its grasseswashed along their base in a gold-green, scented foam. 

Turning to the right, Grôm led the way close along the cliff-foottoward the water, which glowed like brass about a mile ahead. Alongthe right of their path the ground sloped off gently to a belt of thathigh cane-like growth which Grôm regarded with such suspicion. Beforethey had gone many hundred yards his suspicion was more thanjustified. 

From a little way behind them there arose all at once a chorus ofexplosive gruntings, mixed with a huge crashing of the canes. Glancingover their shoulders, they saw a great rust-red animal, about the sizeof a rhinoceros, which burst forth from the canes and stood staringafter them. Its hideous head was larger than that of any rhinocerosthey had ever seen, and armed with a pair of enormous conical horns, each more than a foot in diameter at the base and tapering to a keenpoint. Set side by side, at a moderate angle, upon the bridge of thesnout, they were far more terrible than the horns of any rhinoceros. Their bearer lowered them menacingly, and charged down upon Grôm'sparty with a sound that was something between the grunting of a hogand the braying of an ass. Immediately upon his massive heels a wholeherd of the red monsters surged forth from the canes, and camecharging after their leader at a ponderous gallop which seemedliterally to shake the earth. 

For a moment or two Grôm's party had paused, confident in their ownfleetness of foot, and wondering at that pair of amazing horns on themonster's snout. But when the rest of the terrific herd camethundering down upon them, they fled in all haste. To their amazement, they found that their speed was none too great for their need. The redmonsters, in spite of their bulk, were disconcertingly swift. 

As he neared the swift promontory which terminated with the range ofdowns, Grôm began to fear that he and his followers would have to takerefuge in the water. This water, as it chanced, was the brackishestuary of a river which, sweeping down from the east, here made itsway to the sea through a long, slanting break in the limestone hills. It was now near low tide, and there opened before the hard-pressedfugitives, as they approached the shore, a strip of damp beach runningaround the base of the bluff. As they left the grass and ran out uponthe beach they were astonished to find that the thundering pursuit hadstopped short. Just at the turn of the cliff they halted and staredback wonderingly. Their pursuers, though swinging their great hornsand braying with rage, were evidently unwilling to venture so near thewaterside. They drew back, indeed, as if they feared it, and at lastwent crashing away into the canes. The fugitives, glad of anopportunity to rest their laboring lungs, squatted down with theirbacks against the cliff and congratulated themselves on having got ridof such perilous attentions. But Grôm's sagacious eyes searched thecliff face anxiously, without neglecting to watch the unruffled water. If that water was so dreaded that even the mighty herd of theirpursuers durst not approach it, surely its smiling surface must hidesome peril of surpassing horror. 

For the next few hundred yards, till it vanished around the curve, thestrip of naked beach was not more than twenty or thirty feet in width. Not without some apprehensions, Grôm decided to push forward. Thereseemed nothing else to do, indeed, seeing that the cane-beds behindthem were occupied by that irresistible red herd. Somewhere ahead, heargued, there must be a break in the cliff which would give access tothe rolling downs above, where they might travel in safety. 

Disguising his growing uneasiness that he might not discourage hisfollowers--who were now full of elation at having reached the foot ofthe hills--he led on again in haste, though there seemed to be no needof haste. Both Hobbo and young Mô, indeed, were for staying a whileand sleeping in the shade of an overhanging rock. But A-ya, who sensedthrough sympathy her lord's disquietude, and the little scout Loob, who was always, on principle, ill at ease in any spot where there wasno tree to climb, were as eager as their chief to push ahead; and theothers would never have dared, in any case, to question Grôm'sdecision. 

As they rounded the next bend of the cliff, however, a clamor ofexcited satisfaction arose from all the party. Straight ahead, and notfifty paces distant, there opened before them a spacious cave-mouth, with a somewhat wider strip of beach before it. Immediately beyond thecave the strip of beach came sharply to an end, and the tide lappedsoftly against the foot of the cliff. 

But just then, in the moment of their elation, a terrifying thinghappened. As if aroused by their voices, the still surface a few yardsfrom shore boiled up, and was lashed to foam by the strokes of agigantic tail. 

"Run!" yelled Grôm; and they all dashed forward, there being no chanceto go back. In the same instant, an appalling head--like that of athrice magnified and distorted crocodile, with vast, round, paintedeyes--was upthrust from the water and came rushing after them at apace which sent up a curving wave before it. 

Quick as thought, Grôm drew his bow and shot at the appalling head. The arrow drove straight into the gaping throat, eliciting athunderous bellow of rage, but producing no other effect. Then Grômsprang after his fleeing companions, and raced for his life toward thecave mouth. The cave might be nothing more than a death-trap for themall; but it seemed to offer the one possibility of escape. 

As they dashed into the cave the awful, gaping head was close behindthem. They had a flashing glimpse, through the gloom, of high-archeddistance melting into blackness, of a strip of black water along theright, and to the left a gentle ascent of smooth white sand, whose endwas out of sight. 

Up this slope they raced, with the clashing of monstrous fangs closebehind them. But they had not gone a dozen strides when the slopequivered, and heaved upwards shudderingly beneath them; and they allfell forward flat upon their faces. From all but Grôm there went up ashriek so piercing that in their own ears it disguised the stupendousrending roar which at that moment seemed to stun the air. The mightyarch of the cave mouth had slipped and crashed down, completelyjamming the entrance, and opening up a gash of blue heaven above theirheads. 

To Grôm's unshaken wits, it was clear on the instant what hadhappened. He staggered to his feet and looked back through a rain offalling rock-splinters. He had a vision of their colossal pursuer, itsjaws stretched to their utmost width, the vast globes of its eyesprotruding from their armored sockets, its ponderous, bowed fore-legspawing the air aimlessly in the final convulsion. The fallingrock-mass had caught it on the middle of the back, crushing its mightyframe like an eggshell. 

For a second or two, Grôm stood there rigid, staring, his gnarledfingers clenched upon his weapons. Then a second earthquake tremorbeneath his feet warned him. With an unerring instinct, he sprang onup the slope after his companions, who had fled as soon as they couldpick themselves up. And in the next moment the rock above his head, fissured deep by the rains, slipped again. With a growling screech, asif torn from the bowels of the mountain, it settled slowly down, andsealed the mouth of the cave to utter blackness. 

Grôm stopped short, having no mind to dash out his brains against therock. There was stillness at last, and silence save for the faint, humming moan of the earthquake which seemed to come from vast depthsbeneath his feet. Profoundly awed, but master of his spirit, he stoodleaning upon his spear in the thick dark till the last of that strangehumming note had died away. Then, through a silence so thick it seemedto choke him, he called aloud:

"A-ya! where are you?"

"_Grôm!_" came the girl's answer, a sobbing cry of relief and joy, from almost, as it seemed, beneath his outstretched hand. 

"We are all here, " came the voices of the three men. 

They had fallen headlong at the second shock, as at the first; and inthe darkness they had not dared to rise again, but lay waiting fortheir leader to tell them what to do. In half a dozen cautious, groping steps he was among them, and sank down by A-ya's side, clutching her to him to stop her trembling. 

"What are we to do now?" asked the girl, after a long silence. WithoutGrôm, they would probably have died where they were, not daring tostir in the darkness. But their faith in their chief kept themcheerful even in this desperate plight. 

"We must find a way out, " answered Grôm, with resolute confidence. 

"If Hobbo had not dropped the fire!" said young Mô bitterly. 

The giant groaned in self-abasement, and beat his chest with his greatfists. But Grôm, who would allow no dissensions in his following, answered sternly:

"Be silent. You might have done no better yourself. "

Then for a time there was no more said, while Grôm, sitting therein the dark with the girl's face buried in his great shaggy chest, thought out his plans. It was plain to him, from what he had seen inthat last instant of daylight, that the entrance was blockedimpregnably. Moreover, he judged that any attempt to work anopening in that direction would be likely, for the present, to bringmore rocks down upon them. It would be better, first, to feel theirway on into the cave in the hope of finding another exit. He wasnot afraid of getting lost, no matter how absolute the dark, becausehe possessed that sixth sense, so long ago vanished from modernman's equipment--the sense of direction. He knew that, as a matter ofcourse, he could find his way back to this starting-point wheneverhe would. 

"Come on!" he ordered at last, lifting A-ya and holding her hand inhis grasp. Reaching out with his spear, he kept tapping the groundbefore him as he went, and occasionally the wall upon his left. Sometimes, too, he would reach upwards to assure himself that therewas no lowering of the rocky ceiling. A spear's length to the right, more or less, he got always a splash of water. 

With their fine senses intensely alert, they were able to make fairprogress, even though unaided by their eyes. But Grôm checked hisadvance abruptly. He had a perception of some obstacle before him. Hereached out his spear as far as he could. It touched a soft object. The object, whatever it was, surged violently beneath the touch. Hisflesh crept, and the shaggy hair uplifted on his neck. "Back!" hehissed, thrusting A-ya off to arm's length and bracing his spear pointbefore him to receive the expected attack. A pair of faintlyphosphorescent eyes, small, but so wide apart as to show that theirowner's head must have been enormous, flashed round upon them. Therewas a hoarse squeal of alarm, and a heavy body went floundering offinto the water. They could hear it swimming away in hot haste. 

Every one drew a long breath. Then, after a few moments, A-ya laughedsoftly:

"It's good to find something at last that runs away from us instead ofafter us!" said she. 

A little further on the cave wall turned to the left. A few steps, andtheir path came to an end. There was water ahead of them, and on bothsides. Grôm's exploring spear assured them that it was deep water. 

"We must swim, " said he. "Leave your clubs behind. " And leading theway down into the unknown tide, he struck out straight ahead. 

It was nerve-testing work swimming thus through that unseen water toan unguessed goal; but Grôm was unhesitating, and his companionsrested upon his steady will. The water was of a summer warmth, andslightly salt, which convinced him that it had free communication withthe sunlit tides outside. Several times he came within touch of therocky walls of the cavern, and found that they went straight down to adepth he could not guess. But he kept on with hope and confidence at aleisurely pace, which, in that bland and windless flood, he knew thatevery member of his party could have maintained for half a day. 

Suddenly there appeared ahead of them a faint, bluish gleam upon thewater's surface. It was something elusive and unreal, and vaguelymenacing. 

"Daylight!" exclaimed young Mô eagerly. But Grôm said nothing. He didnot think it was daylight, and he was apprehensive of some new peril. 

The strange light grew and spread. It was evident now that it rosefrom the water, and also that it was advancing rapidly to meet theastonished swimmers. After a few moments it was bright enough in itsblue pallor to show the swimmers that they were traversing a vast hallof waters, whose roof was lost in darkness. Some fifty yards ahead ofthem, and a little to the right, a low spit of rock, half awash forthe greater part of its length, ran out slantingly from the wall ofthe stupendous chamber. 

Toward this ledge Grôm now led the way, hurling himself through thewater on his side at top speed. He could not fathom this mysteriousphosphorescence, and he wished to get his people out upon dry landbefore it reached them. But fast as the adventurers swam, the ghostlyradiance spread faster. Before they got to the ledge, the light wasall about them; but it seemed to be coming from a great depth. 

Nervously they all glanced down, and a low cry of horror broke fromtheir lips. The depths were swarming with monstrous, luminous forms, amoon-bright, crawling, sliding field of claws and feelers, and broad, flat backs, and dreadful, protruding eyes. 

The eyes all stared straight up at them with a fixed malignancy thatfroze even Grôm's blood. They seemed innumerable, and all togetherthey came suddenly floating upwards. 

Already the fugitives were dragging themselves out upon the ledge, infrantic haste, when the diabolical swarm reached the surface. ButHobbo, who was the slowest swimmer, was merely clutching at the rockwhen the water boiled all about him in a froth of light. A pair ofhuge, pincer-like claws seized him by the neck, and another pair byone arm, plucking him back. His convulsed face stared upward for aninstant, and then, with a choked scream, he was dragged under. Hedisappeared in a swirl of pale blue, frantically waving claws, andeyes, and feelers, and black-fringed, chopping mouths. 

Beside himself with rage and horror, Grôm stabbed down wildly into thewhirling struggle, and his example was followed at once by Loob andyoung Mô. Some of their random blows went home, and as one or anotherof the gigantic crabs turned over in its death-throes, its nearestfellows seized it, tore it to pieces, and devoured it. 

But A-ya, who had taken no part in this vengeance, now snatched Grômby the arm, shrieking wildly:

"Look! They are coming out!"

Recovering their senses, the three half-maddened men stared aboutthem. On every side the gigantic crabs--some with claws eight or tenfeet long, and eyes upon the ends of long waving stalks--were crawlingup upon the ledge. 

The ledge, fortunately, was of some width. At its landward end it roseinto a mass of tumbled rocks perhaps twenty or thirty feet above thewater. Toward this post of vantage the adventurers fought their way, striking and thrusting desperately with their spears as the monsters, crowding up from the water on either side, snatched at them with theirterrible mailed claws. Over and over again one or another of the partywas seized by the foot or the leg; but his companions would beat thelong, jointed limb to fragments, or drive their spear-points deep intothe awful, drooling mouth, and set him free. 

At last, bleeding from many wounds, they reached the end of the ledgeand clambered to the top. Here but three or four of the giantcrustaceans tried to follow them. These were easily speared fromabove, and hurled back disabled among their ravening kin. And thewhole swarm, apparently forgetting their intended victims as soon asthey were out of reach, fell to fighting hideously among themselvesover the convulsed bodies of these wounded. The lower portion of theledge, and the water all about it, was a crawling mass of horror thatseemed to froth with blue light. And a confused noise of crackling, snapping and hissing arose from it. 

Every eye but Grôm's was glued in fascination to the baleful scene. But Grôm now thought only of using that pervasive light to bestadvantage while it should last. The wall of the cavern at this pointwas so broken and fissured that it was not unscalable; and a littleway off to the right he marked, at some height above the water, whatlooked like the entrance to a lateral gallery. 

"Come! While the light lasts, " he ordered, setting off over the rocks. The others followed close. Now sidling along knife-like ledges, nowclinging by fingers and toes to almost imperceptible projections, theymade their way across the face of the steep, and gained the mouth ofthe gallery. It was spacious, and easy to traverse, its floor slopingupwards somewhat steeply. They plunged into it with confidence. Andthe blue light of the Hall of Terrors faded out behind them. 

Not many minutes later, another light, as it were a white star, gleamed ahead of them. It grew as they went, and turned to gold. Thena patch of turquoise sky, flecked sweetly with small fleeces of cloud, opened before them, and in a moment more they came out upon a high, blossoming down, blown over by a breeze that smelt of honey and salt. Below them was a lovely, land-locked bay, with a herd of deerpasturing among scattered trees by the shore. Away behind themundulated the gracious line of the downs, inviting their feet. 

"It is a pleasant land, " said Grôm, "and we will surely come back toit. But I think we must find another way than that by which we came. "

CHAPTER XI

THE FEASTING OF THE CAVE FOLK

I

At last, and reluctantly, the Folk of the Caves had withdrawn fromtheir earthquake-harassed valley and betaken themselves to the newdwelling-place which Grôm had found for them, on the green hill-slopebeside the Bitter Waters. They had lost no time, however, in acceptingthe new conditions; for these caves in the limestone were ample andsecure--it was hard for any invader to come at them save by way of thelong, bare ridge of the downs running westward behind the caves; asweet-water brook ran almost past their threshold to fall with apleasant clamor into the bay, --and the surrounding country was rich ingame. The vast basin of marshy plain and colossal jungle, to be sure, which stretched and steamed below the downs to southward, was thehabitation of strange monsters; but these, apparently, had no tastefor exploring the high, clean, windy downs. 

On a certain golden morning it chanced that the caves were well-nighdeserted. The men of the tribe, including the chiefs themselves, Bawrand Grôm, together with most of the women and the half-grown children, had gone off down the shore to a shallow inlet five or six milesdistant to gather shell-fish--great luscious mussels and peculiarlyplump and savory whelks. The girl A-ya, absorbed in her specialoccupation of fashioning bows and arrows for the tribe, had remained, with a half-score of old men and women and Grôm's giant slave, thelame Bow-leg, Ook-ootsk, to guard the little children and the tribalfires. As Grôm's mate, and his confidential associate in all hisgreatest ventures, A-ya's prestige in the tribe had come to be onlyless than that of Bawr and Grôm themselves. 

On the open, grassy level before the cave mouth, the two great firesburned steadily in the sun. The giant Ook-ootsk, hideous with hisape-like forehead, his upturned, flaring nostrils, his protruding jaw, his shaggy, clay-colored torso, and his short, massive, grotesquelybowed legs--of which one was twisted so that the toes pointed almostbackwards--lay sprawling and chuckling benevolently near the entrance, while a swarm of little ones, A-ya's two among them, clambered overhim. The old men and the old women most of them dozed in the shade, save two or three of the most diligent, who occupied their gnarledfingers in twisting thin strips of hide into bow-strings, or lashingslivers of stone into the heads of spears. A-ya sat cross-legged alittle apart, beside a tiny fire, laboriously fashioning her bows andarrows by charring the wood in the embers and then rubbing it betweentwo rough stones. With her head bent low over her work, the heavy, tangled masses of her hair fell upon it and got in her way, and fromtime to time she shook them aside impatiently. It was a picture ofprimeval peace. 

But peace, in the days when earth was young, was something moreprecarious than a bubble. 

From around the green shoulder of the hill came a sound of tramplinghooves and labored breathing. A-ya sprang to her feet, snatching upher own well-tried bow and fitting an arrow to the string. At the sametime she gave a sharp alarm-cry, at which the lame slave, Ook-ootsk, arose, shaking off the swarm of children, and came hobbling towardsher with his weapons in both hands. An old woman pounced upon thestartled, wide-eyed children, and in a twinkling had them shepherdedinto the cave-mouth, out of sight. The old men, springing from theirsleep, and blinking, hurried forth into the sunlight, with such spearsor clubs as they could lay instant hand upon. 

A breathless moment, while all stood waiting for they knew not what. Then around the corner appeared a tall, wide-antlered elk, its eyesshowing the whites with terror, its dilated nostrils spattering bloodyfroth. A long, raking wound ran scarlet down one flank. Staggeringfrom weariness or loss of blood, it came on straight toward thecave-mouth, so blinded by its terror that it seemed not to see thehuman creatures awaiting it, or even the fires before them. 

A-ya fetched a deep breath of relief when she saw that this was noravening monster. Her immediate thought was the hunter's thought. Shedrew her bow to the full length of her shaft, and as the panting beastwent by she let drive. The arrow pierced to half its span, just behindthe straining fore-shoulder. Blood burst from the animal's nostrils. It fell on its knees, struggled up again, blundered on for half adozen strides, and dropped half-way across the second fire. 

There was a chorus of triumphant shouts from the old men and women;and A-ya started forward with the intention of dragging her prize fromthe fire. But a look of apprehension and warning in the keen littleeyes of Ook-ootsk, who had by this time hobbled to her side, checkedher. In a flash the meaning of it came to her. 

"What do you suppose was chasing it, Ook-ootsk?" she queried; andwhipped about, without waiting for his answer, to stare anxiously atthe green shoulder of the hillside. 

"Black lion, maybe, " said Ook-ootsk, in his harsh, clucking voice, dropping his spear and club beside him and setting a long arrow to thestring of his massive bow. 

But the words were hardly out of his throat, when his guess was provedwrong. Around the turn came lumbering, with huge heads hung low andslavering, half-open jaws a pair of those colossal red bears of thecaves which had always been A-ya's peculiar terror. 

"Hide the children!" she yelled, and then let fly an arrow, almostwithout aim, at the foremost of the monsters. She was the best shot inthe tribe, and the shaft sped even too true. It struck the bear fullin the snout, and pierced through the palate and into the throat--awound which, though likely to prove mortal after a time, only made thebeast more dangerous for the moment. It paused, coughing, and tried topaw the torment from its jaws, and then rushed forward, screaminghideously. 

In that pause, however, though it was but for a second or two, thesecond bear had forged ahead of its companion. It was greetedinstantly by an arrow from the massive bow of Ook-ootsk, aimed withcool deliberation. The long shaft of hickory, delivered thus at closerange, caught the enemy in the front of the right shoulder and droveclean in to the joint, so that the leg gave way and the gigantic brutealmost fell upon its side. With a roar, it bit off the protruding halfof the tough hickory, and then came on again, on three legs. FromA-ya's nimble bow it got another arrow, which went half-way throughits neck; but to this deadly wound, which sent the blood gushing fromits mouth, it seemed to pay no heed whatever. A-ya's next shot missed;and then, screaming for the old men to come into the fray, shesnatched up her stone-headed spear and ran around behind the nearestfire, expecting the bears to follow her and be led away from thehiding-place of the children. 

But she had forgotten that the slave, Ook-ootsk, with his twisted andshrunken leg, could not run. That valiant savage, blinking his littleeyes rapidly and blowing defiantly through his upturned nostrils as hesaw his doom rushing upon him, let drive one more of his long shaftsinto the red, towering bulk, then dropped his bow, sank upon one knee, and held up his spear slantingly before him, with its butt firmlybraced upon the ground. As the monster reared itself and fell uponhim, the jagged point of the spear was forced deep into its belly, straight up till it reached the backbone. Then the shaft snapped, Ook-ootsk sprawled forward upon his face, and the monster, in theparoxysm of its amazement and agony, leapt onward and plunged rightover him, involuntarily hurling him aside and clawing most of theflesh off his back with a kick of one gigantic hind paw. 

He clenched his teeth stoically, shut his eyes, folded his long, hairyarms about his head, and rolled himself into a ball, confidentlyexpecting in the next moment to feel the life crunched out of him. 

But just as the monster, recovering itself, was turning madly tofinish off its insignificant but torturing opponent, A-ya came leapingback to the rescue, with a blazing and sparkling faggot in each hand, and the old men, some with fire-brands, some with spears, clamoringresolutely behind her. With fearless dexterity, she thrust the firestraight into the monster's eyeballs, totally blinding him. As hewheeled to strike her down, she slipped aside with a mocking laugh, and threw one of the brands between his jaws, where he crunched uponit savagely before he felt the torment of it and spat it out. 

Depending now upon his ears, the monster blundered straight forward inthe direction of the shouting voices. He had quite forgottenOok-ootsk. He raged to come at this last intolerable foe, who hadscorched the light from his eyes. He made for her voice straightenough; but it chanced that exactly in his path lay the secondfire--that into which the body of the elk had fallen. Already toomaddened with the anguish of his wounds to notice the fire atonce, he stumbled upon the body. Here, surely, was one of his foes. He fell to rending the carcase with his claws, and biting it, crawling forward upon it to reach its throat with the fire licking upderisively about his head; till at length the flames were drawn deepinto his laboring lungs, searing them and sealing them so that theycould no more perform their office. With a shallow, screeching gasp hethrew himself backwards out of the fire, rolled upon the turf, andlay there fighting the air with his paws as he strangled swiftly andconvulsively. 

The second bear, meanwhile, wallowing with astonishing nimbleness onthree legs, had charged roaring into the group of old men. In atwinkling he had three or four spears sticking into him; but the armsthat hurled the spears were weak, and the monster ramped on unheeding. Several fire-brands fell upon him, scorching his long, red fur, but heshook them off, too maddened to remember his natural dread of theflames. 

The group scattered in all directions. But one brave old gray-beard, who had marked A-ya's success, lingered in the path, and tried tothrust his blazing faggot into the monster's eyes, as she had done. Hewas not quick enough. The monster threw up its muzzle, dodging thestroke, and the next moment it had struck down its feeble adversaryand crushed his head between its tremendous jaws. 

In its folly, it now forgot its other enemies, and fell to wreakingits madness on the lifeless victim. But in another second or two itwas fairly overwhelmed with the red brands descending upon its head. A-ya, with all the force of her strong young arms, drove her shortspear half-way through its loins. Then, with one eye blinded and itslong fur smouldering, its rage gave way suddenly into panic. Liftingits giant head high into the air, as if thus to escape its fieryassailants, it turned and scuttled back the way it had come, while theold men swarmed after it, belaboring and jabbing its elephantine rumpwith their live brands. 

A-ya, racing like a deer and screaming with exultation, ran round thepack of old men and stabbed the frantic brute in the neck, with herspear held short in both hands. Shrinking abjectly from this attack, he swerved off toward the left. It was his left eye that was blinded, and the other was full of smoke and ashes. He missed the path, therefore, and plunged squalling over the edge of the bluff, which atthis point dropped about a hundred feet, almost perpendicularly, tothe beach. Rolling over and over, and bouncing out into space everytime he struck the cliff face he fell to the bottom amid a shower ofstones and dust, and lay there as shapeless as a fur rug dropped froman upper window. 

The old men, jabbering in triumph, craned their shaggy gray heads outover the brink to grin down upon him, while A-ya, with a wild light inher eyes and her strong white teeth gleaming savagely, turned back totend the wounds of her slave, Ook-ootsk. 

II

Having assured herself that the hurts of Ook-ootsk, dreadful thoughthey were, were yet not mortal (our sires of Cave and Tree took a lotof killing!), A-ya stepped over to the further fire to see aboutrescuing the carcase of the slain elk before it should be quite burnedup. As a matter of fact, there was little of it actually consumed bythe fire, but it was amazingly shredded by the clawing of the blindedbear; and an odor of roasted venison steamed up from it, which seemedrather pleasant to A-ya's nostrils. Under her direction, the old menhauled the body from the fire by the hind-legs, and dragged it over tothe edge of the bluff before cutting it up, for convenience in gettingrid of the offal. Every one followed, to secure their due share of thetit-bits, except Ook-ootsk and one old woman. This old woman satrocking and keening beside the body of her mate whom the bear hadslain; while Ook-ootsk crawled off into a neighboring hollow to lookfor certain healing herbs which should cleanse and astringe hiswounds. 

The hide of the elk was too much burnt, too ripped and torn by theclaws of the bear, to be of any use except for thongs; but the old menskinned it off expertly before dividing the flesh. Though theirgnarled fingers were feeble, they were amazingly clever in the use ofthe sharp-edged flakes of stone which served them as knives. A-yastood by them, watching closely, to see that none of the speciallydainty cuts were appropriated. These delicacies were reserved forherself and her two children, and for Grôm when he should return. Shehad the right to them, not only because she was the mate of Grôm, butbecause the kill was hers. 

As she stood over the carcase--the fore-part of which had beensuperficially barbecued in the fire--the smell of the roasted fleshbegan to appeal to her even more strongly than at first. As shesniffed it, curiously, it began to entice her appetite as nothing hadever tempted it before. She touched a well-browned, fatty morsel, andthen put her fingers into her mouth. The flavor seemed to her asdelightful as the smell. She cast about for a suitable morsel on whichto experiment. 

Now it chanced that the elk's tongue, having lain in the heart of thefire, but enclosed within the half-open jaws, had been cooked to aturn. A-ya possessed herself of this ever-coveted delicacy. It lookedso queer, in its cooked state, charred black along the lower edge, that she hesitated to taste it. At last, persuaded by its fragrance, she brought herself to nibble at it. 

A moment more and she was devouring it with a gusto which, had mannersbeen greatly considered in the days when the earth was young, mighthave seemed unbecoming in the wife of a great chief. Never before hadshe eaten anything that seemed to her half so delicious. It was thefood she had all her life been craving. Her two little boys, pullingat her, aroused her from her ecstasy. She gave them each a fragment, which they swallowed greedily, demanding more; and between the threeof them the great lump of roast tongue quickly vanished. 

The rest of the crowd meanwhile had been looking on with instinctivedisapproval. The portions of the meat which the fire had cooked, orpartly cooked, seemed to them spoiled. A-ya might, indeed, like thestrange food; but she was different from the rest of them in so manyways! When, however, they saw her two boys follow her example, andnoted their enthusiasm, several of the old men ventured to try forthemselves. They were instant converts. Last of all, the old women andthe children--always the most conservative in such matters, took thenotion that they were losing something, and dared to essay the noveldiet. One taste, as a rule, proved enough to vanquish theirprejudices. In a very few minutes every shred of the carcase thatcould claim acquaintance with the fire had been eaten, and all wereclamoring for more. Fully three-parts of the carcase remained, indeed, but it was all raw flesh. A-ya looked down upon it with disdain. 

"Take it back and throw it on the fire again!" she ordered angrily. The generous lump of steak, which she had hacked off for herself fromthe loin, had proved to be merely scorched on the outside, and she wasdisappointed. She stood fingering the raw mass with resentfulaversion, while the old men and women, chattering gleefully andfollowed by the horde of children dragged the mangled carcase back tothe fire, lifted it laboriously by all four legs, and managed todeposit it in the very midst of the flames. A shrill shout of triumphwent up from the withered old throats at this achievement, and theyall drew back to wait for the fire to do its wonderful work. 

But A-ya was impatient, and vaguely dissatisfied as she watched thatcrude roasting in the process. She stood brooding, eyeing the fire andturning her lump of raw flesh over and over in her hands. The attitudeof body was one she had caught from Grôm, when he was groping for asolution to some problem. And now it seemed as if she had caught hisattitude of mind as well. Into her brain, for the moment passive andreceptive, flashed an idea, she knew not whence. It was as if it hadbeen whispered to her. She picked up a spear, jabbed its stone headfirmly into the lump of meat, and thrust the meat into the edge of thefire, as far as it could go without burning the wood of the spearshaft. 

It took her a very few minutes to realize that her idea was nothingless than an inspiration. Moving the morsel backwards and forwards tokeep it from charring, she found that it seemed to do best over a massof hot coals rather than in a flame; and being a thin cut, it cookedquickly. When it was done she burnt her fingers with it, and her bigred mouth as well; and her two boys, for whom she had torn off shredstoo hot for herself to hold, danced up and down and wept loudly withthe smart of it, to be instantly consoled by the savor. 

Noting the supreme success of A-ya's experiment, the spectators rushedin, dragged the carcase once more from the fire, and fell to hackingoff suitable morsels, each for himself. In a few minutes every one whocould get hold of a long arrow, or a spear, or a pointed stick, wasbusy learning to cook. Even the wailing old mourner, finding theexcitement irresistible, forsook the body of her slain mate and cameforward to take her share. Only the dead man, lying outstretched inthe sun by the cave-door, and the crippled giant Ook-ootsk, away inthe green hollow nursing his honorable wounds, had no part in therejoicing, in this revel of the First Cooked Food. The hot meatjuices, modified by the action of the fire, were almost as stimulatingas alcohol in the veins of these simple livers, and the revel grew tosomething like an orgie as the shriveled nerves of the elders began tothrill with new life. A-ya, seeing the carcase of the elk melt awaylike new snow under a spring sun, gave orders to skin and cut up thebody of the first bear. 

But the old men were too absorbed in their feasting to pay anyattention to her orders; and she herself was too exhilarated andcontent to make any serious effort to enforce them. Every one, old andyoung alike, was sucking burnt fingers and radiating greasy, happysmiles, and she felt dimly that anything like discipline would beunpopular at such a moment. 

During all this excitement the main body of the tribe came stragglingback along the beach from their hunting of whelks and mussels. At thefoot of the bluff below the cave they found the body of the secondbear, and gathered anxiously about it, clamoring over its spear-woundsand the arrows sticking in it, till Bawr and Grôm, who were in therear, came up. It was plain there had been a terrific battle at theCave. With most of the warriors the two Chiefs dashed on and up thepath, to find out how things had gone, while a handful remained behindto skin the bear and cut up the meat. 

When the anxious warriors arrived before the cave, they were amazed atthe hilarity which they found there--and inclined, at first, to resentit, being something to which they had no clue. What were all the oldfools doing, dancing and cackling about the fire, and wasting goodmeat by poking it into the fire on the ends of sticks and spears andarrows?

The younger women, coming up behind the warriors, were derisive. Theywere always critical in their attitude towards A-ya--so far as theydared to be--and now they ran forward to scold and slap theirrespective children for putting this disgusting burnt meat into theirmouths. 

To Grôm and Bawr, however, A-ya explained the whole situation in a fewpertinent phrases, and followed up her explanation by proffering themeach a well-cooked morsel. They both smelled it doubtfully, tasted it, broke into smiles, and devoured it, smacking their bearded lips. 

"Did _you_ do this, girl?" demanded Grôm, beaming upon her proudly andholding out his great hairy hand for another sample. But Bawr strodeforward, thrust the old men aside, hacked himself off a generouscollop, stuck it on his spear-head, and thrust it into the fire. 

In his impatience, Bawr kept pulling the roast out every minute ortwo, to taste it and see if it was done enough. His enthusiasm--andthat of Grôm, who was now following his example--cured the rest of thewarriors of their hesitation, so effectually that in five minutesthere was nothing more left of the great elk's carcase but antlers, bone and offal. Those who had got nothing fell upon the body of thebear, skinning it and hacking it in greedy haste. The young women, having satisfied convention by slapping their bewildered andprotesting brats, soon yielded to curiosity and began surreptitiouslyto nibble at the greasy cooked morsels which they had confiscated. Then they, too, grabbed up spears and sticks for toasting-forks andcame clamoring shrilly for their portions. And A-ya, standing a littleapart with Grôm, smiled with comprehending sarcasm at theirconversion. 

For the next few hours the fires were surrounded each by a seethingand squabbling mob, the innermost rings engaged in toasting theircollops with one hand, while with the other they tried to shield theirfaces from the heat. As fast as those in the front rank wriggled outwith their browned and juicy tit-bits, others battled in to take theirplaces; and the Tribe of the Cave Men, mindful of nothing but thegratification of this new taste, feasted away the afternoon with suchunanimous and improvident rejoicing as they had never known before. Atlast, radiant with gravy and repletion, they flung themselves downwhere they would and went to sleep, Bawr and Grôm, and two or threeothers of the older warriors, who had been wise enough to banquetwithout gorging themselves, thought with some misgiving of what mighthappen if an enemy should steal upon them at such an hour of torpor. 

But no enemy approached. With the fall of the dew the moon arose overthe bay, honey-colored in a violet sky, and played fantastic trickswith the shifting light of the fires. And from within the cave camesoftly the voice of A-ya, soothing a restless child. 

CHAPTER XII

ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS

I

The People of the Cave were running short of arrows. The supply ofyoung hickory sprouts, on which they had depended for their shafts, was almost exhausted. And within a two days' journey of the Cavesthere was nothing to be found that would quite take the place of thosehickory sprouts. Neither Grôm himself nor any other member of histribe had as yet succeeded in so fixing a tip of bone or flint to ashaft of cane as not to interfere with its penetration. Some growthmust be found that was tough, perfectly straight, and tapering, whileat the same time so solid and hard of grain that it would take andhold a point, and heavy enough for driving power. All this wasdifficult to find, and Grôm was convinced that it must be sought forfar afield. Life had been running uneventfully for months at the GreatCaves, and Grôm's restless spirit was craving new knowledge, newadventure. 

On this quest of the arrow Grôm took with him only two companions--hisslim, swift-footed mate, A-ya and that cunning little scout, Loob, theHairy One. 

For the space of three days they journeyed due west from the Caves. Then the range of downland which they had been following swept offsharply to the south. 

Being bent upon exploring to the westward--though he was not veryclear as to his reasons for his preference--Grôm led the way down fromthe hills into the rankly wooded plain. For two days more they pushedon through incessant perils, the country swarming with black lions, saber-tooth, and woolly rhinoceros. As they were not fighting, butexploring, the price of safety was a vigilance so unremitting that itsoon began to get on their nerves, and they were glad to take a wholeday's rest in the spacious security of a banyan top, where nothingcould come at them but leopards or pythons. Neither leopards norpythons gave them any great concern. 

On the second day after quitting their refuge in the banyan top, theyemerged from the jungle so suddenly that they nearly fell into ariver, whose whitish, turbid flood ran swirling heavily before theirfeet. It was a mighty stream, a good half-mile in width, and at thispoint the current was eating away the bank so hungrily that wholeranks of tree and bush had toppled over into the tide. 

The great river barred their way, flowing as it did toward thenorth-east, and Grôm reluctantly turned the course of the expeditionsouthward, following up the shore. Swift as was the current, thesefolk of the Caves might have crossed it by swimming; but Grôm knewthat such waters were apt to swarm with giant crocodiles of varyingtype and unvarying ferocity, as well as with ferocious flesh-eatingfish that swarmed in wolfish packs, and were able to tear an aurochsor a mastodon in pieces with their razor-edged teeth. He gazeddesirously at the opposite shore, however--which looked to him muchmore beautiful and more interesting than that on which he stood--andwondered if he should ever be able to devise some way of reaching itother than by swimming. 

Along the river shore the travelers had endless variety to keep theminterested, with a less exhausting imminence of peril than in thedepths of the jungle. Sometimes great branches, draped and festoonedwith gorgeous-flowered lianas, thrust themselves far out over thewater, affording easy refuge. Sometimes the river was bordered by astrip of grassy level, behind which ran the edge of the jungle in theform of a steep bank of violent green, with here and there a broadsplotch of magenta or violet or orange bloom flung over it like acurtain. At times, again, it was necessary to plunge back into thehumming and steaming gloom behind this resplendent screen, in order tomake a détour around some swampy cove, whose dense growth of sedge, fifteen to twenty feet in height, was traversed by wide trails whichshowed it to be the abode of unfamiliar monsters. The travelers werecurious as to the makers of such colossal trails, but were not temptedto gratify this curiosity by invading their lairs. 

In all this time, and through all difficulties and dangers, neitherGrôm nor A-ya, nor the unsleeping Loob had lost sight of the object oftheir journey. Every straight and slender sapling and seedling of hardgrain they tested, but hitherto they had found nothing that camewithin measurable distance of their requirements. 

In the customary order of their going, Grôm went first, peering ahead, ever studying, pondering, observing, with his bow and his club swungfrom his shoulder, his heavy, flint-headed spear always in readinessfor use at close quarters. Loob the scout, little and dark and hairy, with the eyes of a weasel and the heart of a bull buffalo, wentdarting and gliding soundlessly through the undergrowth a few paces tothe left, guarding against the approach of any attack from thejungle-depths. While A-ya, whose quickness and precision with the bow, her darling weapon, were nothing less than a miracle to all the tribe, covered the rear, lest any prowling monster should be following ontheir trail. 

It chanced that A-ya dropped back some paces further, without sayinganything to Grôm. She had marked a slim shaft of a seedling whichlooked suitable for an arrow; and in case the discovery should prove agood one, she wanted the credit of it to herself. She stooped to pullthe seedling up by the roots, since it seemed too tough to break. Itwas obstinate. In the effort her naked side and shoulder leaned fullyagainst the trunk of a small tree of which she had taken no notice. Ina second it seemed to her as if the tree trunk were made of red-hotcoals. The stinging fire of it ran like lightning all over her armsand body. With a piercing scream she sprang away from the tree, andbegan tearing and beating frantically at her body with both hands. Shewas covered with furious ants--the great, red, stinging ants whosevenom is like drops of liquid flame. 

At the sound of her scream, Grôm was back at her side in two leaps, his hair and beard bristling stiffly, his eyes blazing with rage. Butthere was no assailant in sight on whom to hurl himself. For a secondor two he glared about him wildly, with Loob crouched beside him, snarling for vengeance. Then, perceiving the woman's plight, he flunghimself upon her, trying to envelop her in one sweeping embrace thatshould crush all the virulent pests at once. In this he failedsignally; and in an instant the liquid fire was running over his ownbody. The torture of it, however, was a small thing to him comparedwith the torture of seeing them sting the woman, and feeling himselfimpotent to effect her instant succor. He slapped and beat at her withhis great hands, while she covered her face with her own hands toprotect it from disfigurement. 

Loob came to help, but Grôm, his brain keen in every emergency, stopped him. 

"Keep off!" he ordered. "Keep off! and keep watch!"

Then he seized A-ya by one arm, rushed her to the edge of the bank, and dragged her with him into the water. 

At this point the water was not much more than three feet deep. Theycrouched down in it, heads under, for nearly a minute; while Loob, spear in hand, stood over them, his wild little eyes scanning thewater depths in front and the jungle depths behind for the approach ofany foe. 

When they could hold their breath no longer, they stood up. Their redassailants were floating off on the current; but the fiery poisonremained, and they bathed each other's scarlet and scorched shouldersassiduously, forgetful for the moment of everything besides. At thismoment a gigantic water python reared its head from the leafage closeby, fixed its flat, lidless, glittering eyes upon them, and drew backto strike. But in the next second Loob's ready spear was thrust cleanthrough its throat, and his yell of warning tore the air. Grôm andA-ya whipped up onto the bank like a pair of otters: and the python, mortally stricken, shot out into the water over their heads, carryingLoob's spear with it, gripped tight in the constriction of its throatmuscles. 

As the lashing body struck the surface the water boiled about it, suddenly alive with crocodiles. Balked of their human prey, they fellupon the python. One of the monsters shot straight up, half-way out ofthe water, with two convulsive coils of the python's tail wrappedcrushingly about its jaws; but the python, with Loob's spear throughits throat, could only struggle blindly. A moment more and it wasbitten in two, and the crocodiles were fighting monstrously amongthemselves for the writhing fragments. 

"You got us out of that just in time, " said Grôm, grinning upon thelittle scout with approval. 

A-ya wrung the water out of her heavy hair with both hands, and threwthe masses back with an upward toss of her head. 

"I hate ants, " she said, shuddering. "Let's get away from here. "

II

Some two hours after sunrise of the following day they came to a placewhere a belt of woods, perhaps a hundred to two hundred yards indepth, ran bordering the river, while behind it a broad stretch ofgrassy plain thrust back the jungle. Along the edge of the plain, skirting the belt of woods, the grass was short and the traveling waseasy; but off to the left the growth was ranker, and interspersed withthickets such as Grôm always regarded with suspicion. He had learnedby experience that these dense thickets in the grass-land were afavorite lurking-place of the unexpected--and that the unexpected wasalmost always perilous. 

Suddenly from the deeper grass a couple of hundred yards or so to theleft rose heavily the menacing bulk of a red Siva moose bull, andstood staring at them with mingled wonder and malevolence in hiscruelly vindictive eyes. In stature surpassing the biggest rhinocerosthat Grôm had ever seen, he gave the impression of combining theterrific power of the rhinoceros with the agile speed and devilishcunning of the buffalo. His ponderous head, with its high-archedeagle-hooked snout, was armed with two pairs of massive, keen-tipped, broad-bladed horns, that seemed to be a deadly-efficient compromisebetween the horns of a buffalo and the palmated antlers of a moose. This alarming apparition snorted loudly, and at once from behind himlurched to their feet some two score more of his like, and all stoodwith their eyes fixed upon the little group of travelers by the edgeof the wood. 

Grôm had heard vague traditions of the implacable ferocity of thesered monsters, but having before never come across them he answeredtheir stare with keen interest. At the same time, edging in closer tothe wood, he whispered:

"Don't run. But if they come we must go up the first tree. They areswift as the wind, these great beasts, and more terrible than thesaber-tooth. "

"Can't go in _these_ trees!" said Loob, whose piercing eyes hadinvestigated them minutely at the first glimpse of the monsters in thegrass. 

"Why not?" demanded Grôm, his eyes still fixed upon the monsters. 

"Oh! The bees! The terrible bees!" whispered A-ya. "Where can we go?"

Grôm turned his head and scanned the belt of woodland, his ears nowsuddenly comprehending a deep, humming sound which he had hithertoreferred solely to the winged foragers in the grass-tops. Scattered atintervals from the branches, in the shadowy green gloom, hung a numberof immense, dark, semi-pear-shaped globes. They looked harmlessenough, but Grôm knew that their inhabitants, the great jungle-bees, were more to be dreaded than saber-tooth or crocodile. To disturb, orseem to threaten to disturb, one of their nests, meant sure andinstant doom. 

"No, we must trust to our running--and they are very swift, " saidGrôm. "But let us go softly now, and perhaps they will not charge uponus. "

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the giant red bull, with agrunt of wrath, lurched forward and charged down at them. Andinstantly the whole herd, with their ridiculous little tails stuck upstiffly in the air, charged after him. Swift as thought A-ya drew herbow. The arrow buried itself deep in the red giant's muzzle. With abawl of fury, he paused, to try and root the burning torment out ofhis nose. The whole herd paused behind him. It was only for a fewseconds, and then he came on again, blowing blood and foam from hisnostrils; but they were precious seconds, and the fugitives, runninglightly, and stooping low for fear of offending the bees, had gained astart of a hundred yards or more. 

The three were among the swiftest runners of the tribe; but Grôm soonsaw that the utmost they could hope was to maintain their distance. And there was the imminent risk that the bees, disturbed by the noiseof flight and pursuit, might take umbrage. To lessen this frightfulrisk, he swerved out till he was some thirty or forty paces distantfrom the belt of woods. And he noticed, too, that the pursuing herdseemed to have no great anxiety to approach the frontiers of the BeePeople. They were following on a slant that gave the woods a wideberth. 

About a mile further on the woods came to an end, and Grôm, though hefeared the pace might be beginning to tell on A-ya, and though therewas no refuge in sight, breathed more freely. He feared the bees morethan the yellow monsters, because they were something he could notfight. The grass-land now ran clear to the river's edge, and gave firmfooting; and the fugitives raced on, breathing carefully, and trustingto come to trees again before they should be spent. 

At last a curve of the bank showed them the woods sweeping down againto the water, but three or four miles ahead! Grôm, looking back overhis shoulder, realized that their pursuers were now gaining upon themappreciably. With an effort he quickened his pace still further. Loobresponded without difficulty. But A-ya's face showed signs ofdistress, and at this Grôm's heart sank. He began to scan the water, weighing the chances of the crocodiles. It looked as if they weretrapped beyond escape. 

Perhaps half a mile up the shore a spit of land ran out against thecurrent, and behind its shelter an eddy had collected a mass ofuprooted trees and other flood refuse, all matted with green from thegrowth of wind-borne seeds. It was in reality a great natural raft, built by the eddy and anchored behind the little point. For this Grômheaded with new hope. It might be strong enough--parts of it atleast--to bear up the three fugitives. But their furious pursuerswould surely not venture their giant bulks upon it. 

Approaching the point he slackened his pace, and steadied A-ya withone hand. At the edge of the eddy he stopped, casting an appraisingeye over the collection of débris, in order to pick out a stableretreat and also the most secure path to it. In this pause themonsters swept up with a thunder of trampling hooves and windysnortings. They had their victims at last where there was no escape. 

The raging brutes were not more than a dozen paces behind, when Grômled the way out upon the floating mass, picking his steps warily andleaping from trunk to trunk. Loob and A-ya followed with like care. Certain of the trunks gave and sank beneath their feet, but their feetwere already away to surer footing. And at the very outermost point ofthat old collection of débris, where the current and the eddy waveredfor mastery, on a toughly interwoven tangle of uprooted trunks andhalf-dead vines, they found a refuge which did not yield beneath them. Here, steadying themselves by upthrust branches, they turned andlooked back, half apprehensive and half defiant, at their mightypursuers. 

"They'll never dare to try to follow us here, " gasped A-ya. 

But she was wrong. Quite blind with rage through that galling shaft inhis muzzle, the giant bull came plunging on, and half a dozen of hisclosest followers, infected with his madness, came with him. The inneredge of the mass gave way at once beneath them--and the bank at thispoint was straight up and down. The monsters floundered in deep water, snorting and spluttering, while their fellows on the shore checkedthemselves violently and drew back bawling with bewilderment. As thedrowning monsters battled to get their front legs up upon the raft, the edges gave way continually beneath them, plunging them again andagain beneath the surface, while A-ya stabbed at them vengefully withher spear, and Loob shot arrows into them till Grôm stopped him, saying that the arrows were too precious to waste. Thereupon Loobtripped delicately over the surging trunks and smote at the strugglingmonsters' heads with his light club. 

The anchorage of this natural raft having been broken, the weight ofthe monsters striving to gain a foothold upon it soon thrust its firmouter portion forth into the grip of the current. In a minute or twomore this solid portion was torn away from the rest, and went sailingoff slowly down stream with its living freight. The incoherent remnantwas left in the eddy, where the snorting monsters struggled andthreshed about amongst it, now climbing half-way out upon some greattrunk, which forthwith reared on end and slid them off, now vanishingfor a moment beneath the beaten stew of leaves and vines. 

A couple of the horned giants, being close to the bank, now seemed torecover their wits sufficiently to turn and clamber ashore. But theothers were mad with terror. And in a moment more the fascinatedwatchers on the raft perceived the cause of this madness. All roundthe scene of the turmoil the water seethed with lashing tails andsnapping jaws; and then one of the monsters, which had struggled outinto clear water, was dragged down in a boiling vortex of jaws andbloody foam. A few moments more and the whole eddy became a bubblinghell of slaughter, and great broad washes of crimson streamed out uponthe current. The monsters, for all their giant strength, and thepile-driving blows of their huge hoofs, were as helpless as rabbitsagainst their swarming and ravenous assailants; and the battle--whichindeed was no battle at all--soon was over. The eddy had become but awrithing nest of crocodiles. 

"It was hardly worth while wasting arrows, you see?" said Grôm, standing erect on the raft and watching the scene with broodinginterest. 

"Do you suppose those swimming beasts with the great jaws can get atus here?" demanded A-ya with a shudder. 

"While this thing that carries us holds together, I think we can fightthem off, " replied Grôm. And straightway he set himself to examine howsecurely the trees were interknit. The trunks had been piled by floodone upon another, and the structure seemed substantial; but to furtherstrengthen it he set all to work interweaving the free branches andsuch creepers as the mass contained, with the skill that came of muchpractice in the weaving of tree-top nests. 

When all was done that could be done, the voyagers took time to lookabout them. They had by now been swept far out into the river, and theshores on either side seemed low and remote. A-ya felt oppressed, theface of the waters seeming to her so vast, inscrutable and menacing. She stole close up to Grôm and edged herself under his massive arm forreassurance. The little scout sat like a monkey between two branches, and scratched his hairy arms, and, with an expression of pleasedinterest, scanned the water for the approach of new foes. As for Grôm, he was entranced. This, at last, was what he had really come in searchof, the stuff for arrows being merely his excuse to himself. This wasthe utterly new experience, the new achievement. He was traveling bywater, not in it, but upon it--upborne, dry and without discomfort, upon its surface. 

For a little while he did not ask whither he was being borne. To hissurprise the crocodiles and other formidable water-dwellers, whichwere quite unknown to him, paid them no attention whatever; and heconcluded that they looked upon the raft as nothing more than a massof floating driftwood containing nothing for them to eat. He could seethem everywhere about, swimming with brute snouts half above water orbasking on sandy spits of shore. Then he observed that the current wasbearing them gradually towards that further shore which he so longedto visit, and he thrilled with new anticipation. But when, afterperhaps an hour, the capricious tide blew them again to mid-stream, anew idea took possession of him. He must find some way of influencingthe direction of their voyage. He could not long relinquish himself tothe blind whim and chance of the current. 

Just as he was beginning to grapple with this problem, A-yaanticipated his thought--as he had noticed that she often did. Lookingup at him through her tossed hair, she enquired where they weregoing. 

"I am just trying to think, " he answered, "how to make this thing takeus where we want to go. "

"If the water is not too deep, couldn't you push with your longspear?" suggested the girl. 

Acting at once on the suggestion, Grôm leaned over the edge and thrustthe spear straight downwards. But he could find no bottom. 

"It is too deep, " said he, "but I'll find a way. "

As he stood near the forward end of the raft he began sweeping thespear in a wide arc through the water, as if it were a paddle, butwith the idea merely of testing the resistance of the water. Poorsubstitute as the spear was for a paddle or an oar, his great strengthmade up for its inefficiency, and after a few sweeps he was astonishedand delighted to notice that the head of the raft had swung away fromhim, so that it was heading for the shore from which they had come. 

He pondered this in silence for a little, then stepped over to theother side and repeated the experiment. After several vigorous effortsthe unwieldy craft yielded. Its head swung straight, and then, verygradually, toward the other side. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Hehad found a way of influencing their direction. 

"I am going to take you over to the other shore, " he announcedproudly. 

And now, laboring in a keen excitement, he set himself to carry outhis boast. First he so overdid it that he made the raft turn cleanabout and head upstream. He puzzled over this for a time, but atlength got it once more headed in the direction which he wished it totake. Then he found that he could keep it to this direction--more orless--by taking a few strokes on one side, then hurriedly crossing totake a few strokes on the other. And in this way they began once moreto approach the other bank. The process, however, was slow; and Grômpresently concluded that it was wasteful. He hit upon the idea ofsetting A-ya and Loob together to stroking with their spears on oneside, while he, with his great strength, balanced their effort on theother. Whereupon the sluggish craft woke up a little and began to makeperceptible progress, on a slant across the current toward shore. 

"I have found it!" he exclaimed in exultation. "On this thing we cantravel over the water where we will. "

"But not against the current, " objected A-ya, whose enthusiasm was alittle damped by the fact that she did not like the look of thatfurther shore. 

"That will come in time, " declared Grôm confidently. 

"Here's something coming now, " announced Loob, springing to his feetand grabbing his bow. At the same moment the flat, villainous head ofa big crocodile shot up over the edge of the raft, and its owner, withenormous jaws half open, started to scramble aboard. 

A-ya's bow was bent as swiftly as Loob's, and the two arrows spedtogether, both into the monster's gaping gullet. Amazed at thisreception it shut its jaws with a loud snap, halted and came on again. Then a stab of Grôm's great spear caught it full in the eye, and thiswound struck fear into its dull mind. It rolled back hastily into thewater and sank, leaving a foamy wake of blood behind it. 

By this time they were getting nearer the other shore. But on closeview, Grôm was bound to admit that it was not alluring. It was so lowas to be all awash, and fringed deep with towering reeds, which weretraversed by narrow lanes of water. Of dry land there was none to beseen. 

"Oh, we don't want to go ashore there!" protested A-ya fervently. Asshe spoke a hideous head, with immense, round, bulging eyes and long, beak-like mouth arose over the sedge tops on a long, swaying neck andstared at them fixedly. 

"No, we don't, " said Grôm, with decision, making haste to swing thehead of the raft once more out into the channel. They were pursued bya dense crowd of mosquitoes, voracious and venomous, which followedthem to mid-stream and kept tormenting them till an up-river gust blewthem off. 

Grôm made up his mind that the exploration of that unknown shore couldwait a more convenient season. He was now deeply absorbed in thecomplex problem of directing and managing his raft. As he pulled hisspear through the water, and noted the additional effect of its flathead, the conception came to him of something that would get a morepropulsive grip upon the water than was possible to a round pole. Furthermore, he was quick to realize that the immense, shapeless massof débris on which they were traveling might be replaced by somethinglight and manageable which he would make by lashing some trimmedtrunks together with lengths of bamboo to give additional buoyancy. Ashe brooded this in silence, with that deep, inward look in his eyeswhich always kept A-ya from breaking in upon his vision, he came tothe idea of a formal raft, and a formal paddle. And to this he added, with a full sense of its value, A-ya's suggestion that this newstructure might very well be pushed along, in shallow water, with apole. Having thought this out, he drew a deep breath, looked up, andmet A-ya's eyes with a smile. His eager desire now was to get backhome and put his new scheme into execution. 

"Where are we going now?" asked A-ya. 

Grôm looked about him wildly--at the sky, at the far-off hills ontheir right, at the course of the stream, which had changed within thepast few miles. His sense of direction was unerring. 

"This river, " he answered, "flows towards the rising sun, and mustempty into the bitter waters not more than a day or a half day fromthe Caves. We are going home. We will come again to look for arrows ina new raft which I will make. "

As he spoke, Loob's spear darted down beside the raft, and came upwith a big, silvery fish writhing upon it. He broke its neck with ablow and laid the prize at A-ya's feet. 

"I wish we had fire with us, to cook it with, " said she. 

"On the new raft, as I will make it, " said Grôm, "that may very wellbe. Our journey will be safe and easy, and the good fire we will havealways with us. "

CHAPTER XIII

THE FEAR

The People of the Caves were beginning to dread their good fortune. Plenty was being showered upon them with so lavish and sudden a handthat they looked at it askance, distrustful of the unsought-forlargess. For a week or more their hunting-grounds had been swarmingwith game, in amazing and daily increasing numbers, till there waslittle more of chance or of excitement in the hunt than in plucking aripe mango from its branch. It was game of the choicest kinds, too--deer of many varieties, and antelope, and the little wild horsewhose flesh they accounted such a delicacy. They slew, and slew, andtheir cooking-fires were busy night and day, and the flesh they couldnot devour was dried in the sun in long strips or smoked in the reekof green-wood fires. They feasted greedily, but there was somethingsinister in the whole matter, something ominous; and they would stopat times to wonder anxiously what stroke of fate could be hanging overthe Caves. 

During the past day or two, moreover, there had been a disquietinginflux of those great and fierce beasts which the Cave Men were by nomeans anxious to hunt. The giant white and the woolly rhinoceros hadarrived by the score in the dense thickets of the steaming savannahwhich unrolled its green-and-yellow breadths along the southward baseof the downs. These half-blind brutes appeared to be waging a dreadfuland doubtful war with the red herds of those monstrous, cone-hornedsurvivals from an earlier age, the Arsinotheria, who had ruled thereeking savannah for countless cycles. The roar and trampling of thestruggle came up from time to time to the dwellers in the Caves, whenthe hot breeze came up from the southward. 

What concerned the Cave Folk far more than any near-sighted andblundering rhinoceros, however malignant, was the sudden arrival ofthe great red bears, the black lions, the grinning and implacablesaber-tooth tigers, and giant black-gray wolves which hunted in small, handy packs of six or seven in number. All these, the dread foes ofMan for as long as tradition could remember, had been mercifully fewand scattered. Now, in a night, they had become as common as conies;and not a child could be allowed to play beyond shelter of thecave-mouth fires, not a woman durst venture to the spring without abrightly blazing fire-brand in her hand. Yet--and this seemed to theTribe the most portentous sign of all--these blood-thirsty beastsappeared to have lost much of their ancient hostility to Man. Theywere all well fed, of course, their accustomed prey being now soabundant that they had little more to do than put forth an armed pawand seize it. But they all seemed uneasy and half-cowed, as if weigheddown by a menace which they did not know how to face. When a manconfronted them, the fiercest of them made way with a deprecating air, as if to say that they had troubles enough on their minds. 

 * * * * *

Bawr, the Chief, and Grôm, his right hand and his counselor, stoodupon the bare green ridge above the Cave-mouth, and stared downanxiously upon the sun-drenched plain. Of old it had taken keen eyesto discern the varied life which populated its bamboo-thickets andcane-choked marshes. Now it was as thronged as the home pastures of acattle-farm. Here and there a battle raged between such small-brainedbrutes as the white rhinoceros and the cone-horned monster; but forthe most part there was an apprehensive sort of truce, the differentkinds of beasts keeping as far as possible to themselves. 

Further out in the plain pastured a herd of gigantic creatures such asneither Bawr nor Grôm had ever seen before. A pair of rhinoceroslooked like pygmies beside them. They were both tall and massive, of adark mud-color, with colossal heads, no necks whatever, huge ears thatflapped like wings, immensely long, up-curving tusks of gleamingyellow--mighty enough to carry a bison cradled in their curve--and itseemed to the astonished watchers on the ridge that from the snout ofeach monster grew a great snake, which reared itself into the air, andwaved terribly, and pulled down the tops of trees for the monster'sfood. 

It was the Cave Man's first view of the Mammoth--which had not yetdeveloped the shaggy coat it was later to grow on the cold sub-Articplains. 

Recovering at length from his amazement, Bawr remarked:

"They seem to have two tails, those new beasts--a little tail behind, in the usual place, and a very big tail in front, which they use as ahand. They are very many, and very terrible. Do you think it is theywho are driving all these other beasts upon us to overwhelm us?"

Grôm thought long before replying. 

"No, " said he, "they are not flesh-eaters. See! They do not heed theother beasts. They eat trees. And they, too, seem restless. I thinkthey are themselves driven. But what dreadful beings must be they whocan drive them!"

"If they are driven over us, " muttered Bawr, "they will grind us andour fires into the dust. "

"It must be men, " mused Grôm aloud, "men far mightier than ourselvesand so countless that the hordes of the Tree Men would seem a handfulin comparison. Only men, or gods, and in swarms like locusts, could sodrive all these mighty beasts before them as a child drives rabbits. "

"Before they come, " said Bawr, dropping his great craggy chin upon hisbreast, "the People of the Caves will be trodden out. Whither can weescape from such foes? We will build great fires before the caves, andwe will go down fighting, as befits men. "

He lifted his maned and massive head, and shook his great speardefiantly at the unknown doom that was coming up from the south. ButGrôm's eyes were sunken deep under his brows in brooding thought. 

"There is one way, perhaps, " he said at length. "We have learned tojourney on the water. We must build us rafts, many rafts, to carry allthe tribe. And when we can no longer hold our fires and our caves wewill push out upon the water, and perhaps make our way to that blueshore yonder, where they cannot follow us. "

"The waves, and the monsters of the waves, will swallow us up, "suggested Bawr. 

"Some of us, perhaps many of us, " agreed Grôm. "But many of us willescape, to keep the tribe-fires burning, if the gods be kind upon thatday and bind down the winds till we get over. If we stay here we shallall die. "

"It is well, " grunted Bawr, turning to hurry down the steep. "We willbuild rafts. Let us hasten. "

 * * * * *

On the beach below the Caves the Men of the Tribe worked furiously, dragging the trunks of trees together at the water's edge, lashingthem with ropes of vine and cords of hide, and laboriously loppingsome of the more obstructive branches by the combined use of fire andsplit stones. The women, and the lame slave Ook-ootsk--with the oldmen, who, though their hearts were still high, were too frail of theirhands for such a heavy task as raft-building--remained before theCaves under the command of A-ya, Grôm's mate. They had enough to do infeeding the chain of fires, keeping the children out of danger, andfighting back with spear and arrow the ever-encroaching mob ofwild-eyed beasts. The beasts feared the fires, and feared the humanbeings who leaped and screamed and smote from among the fires. Butstill more they seemed to fear some unknown thing behind them. For atime, however, the crackling flames and the biting shafts proved asufficient barrier, and the motley but terrifying invaders wentsheering off irresolutely to westward over the downs. 

Down by the edge of the tide the raft-builders worked under Grôm'sguidance. The broad water--some four or five miles across--was thetidal estuary of a great river which flowed out of the north-west. Itsbrimming current bore down from the interior jungles the trunks ofmany uprooted trees, which the tides of the estuary hurled back andstrewed along the beach. The raft-builders, therefore, had plenty ofmaterial to work with. And the fear that lay chill upon their heartsurged them to a diligence that was far from their habit. 

It was rather like working in a nightmare. From time to time wouldcome a rush, a stampede, of deer or tapirs, along the strip of beachbetween the water and the cliff. The toiling men would draw aside tillthe rabble went by, then fall to work again. 

Once, however, it was a herd of wild cattle, snorting, and tossingtheir wide, keen-pointed horns; and their trampling onrush filled thewhole space so that the men had to plunge out into deep water toescape. Several, afraid of the big-mouthed, flesh-eating fish whichinfested the estuary at high tide, stayed too close in shore, and paidfor their irresolution by being gored savagely. 

It was about the full of the moon and the time of the longest days, and the raft-builders toiled feverishly the whole night through. Bysunrise Bawr and Grôm estimated that there were rafts enough to carrythe whole tribe, provided the present calm held on. They decided, however, to construct several more, in case some should prove lessbuoyant than they hoped. 

But for this most wise provision Fate refused to grant the time. 

A naked slip of a girl, her one scant garment of leopard skin caughtupon a rock and twitched from off her loins as she ran, came fleeingdown the hill-path, her hair afloat upon the fresh morning air. Straggling far behind her came a crowd of children, and old womencarrying babies or bundles of dried meat. 

"They must not come yet. They'll be in the way!" cried Bawr angrily, waving them back. But they paid no attention--which showed that therewas something they feared more even than the iron-fisted Chief. 

"There are none of the young women or the old men, who can fight, among them, " said Grôm. "A-ya must have sent them, because the timehas come. Let us wait for the young girl, who seems to bring amessage. "

Breathless, and clutching at her bosom with one hand, the girl fell atBawr's feet. 

"A-ya says, 'Come quick!'" she gasped. "They are too many. They runover the fires and trample us. "

Grôm sprang forward with a cry, then stopped and looked at his Chief. 

"Go, you, " said Bawr, "and bring them to us. I will stay here and lookto the rafts. "

Taking a half-score of the strongest warriors with him, Grôm raced upthe steep, torn with anxiety for the fate of A-ya and the children. 

It was now about three-quarters tide, and the flood rising strongly. By way of precaution some of the rafts had been kept afloat, let downwith ropes of vine to follow the last ebb, and guided carefully backon the returning flood. But most of them were lying where they hadbeen built, or left by the preceding tide, along high-water mark, ashopelessly stranded, for the next two hours, as a birch log after afreshet. As the old women with children arrived, Bawr rushed them downthe wet beach to the rafts which were afloat, appointing to eachclumsy raft four men, with long, rough flattened poles, to manage it. For the moment, all these men had to do was hold their charges inplace that they might not be swept away by the incoming tide. 

When Grôm and his eager handful, passing a stream of tremblingfugitives on the way, reached the level ground before the Caves, thesight that greeted them was tremendous and appalling. It looked as ifsome great country to the southward had gathered together all itsbeasts and then vomited them forth in one vast torrent, confused andirresistible, to the north. It was a wholesale migration, on such ascale as the modern world has never even dreamed of, but suggested ina feeble way by the torrential drift of the bison across the NorthAmerican plains half a century ago, or the sudden, inexplicablemarches of the lemming myriads out of the Scandinavian barrens thatgive them birth. 

The shrill cries of the women, fighting like she-wolves in defense ofthe children and the home-caves, the hoarse shouts of the old men, weak but indomitable, were mingled with an indescribable medley ofnoises--gruntings, bellowings, howlings, roarings, bleatings andbrayings--from the dreadful mob of beasts which besieged the openspace behind the fires. Some of the beasts were maddened with theirterror, some were in a fighting rage, some only wanted to escape thethrong behind them. But all seemed bent upon passing the fires andgetting into the Caves, as if they thought there to find refuge fromthe unknown fear. 

At the extreme right of the line the two farthest fires were alreadyoverwhelmed, trodden out by frantic hooves, and three or four oldmen, with a couple of desperate young women, behind a barrier ofslain elk and stags were fighting like furies to hold back thevictorious onrush. Two of the old men were down, trodden out betweenthe fires by blind hooves, and a third, jammed limply against therocky wall beside the furthest cave, was being worried by abear--hideously but aimlessly, as if the great beast hardly heededwhat it was doing. There was something peculiarly terrifying in theanimal's preoccupation. 

At the center of the line, immediately before the main Cave-mouth--whoseyawning entrance seemed to be the objective of the swarmingbeasts--A-ya was heading the battle, with the lame slave, Ook-ootsk, crouched fighting at her side like a colossal frog gone mad. Here thefires were almost extinguished--but the line of slain beasts formed atolerable barricade, upon the top of which the women leapt, stabbingwith their spears and screeching shrill taunts, while the old menleaned upon the gory pile to save their strength with frugalprecision. Here and there among the carcases was the body of a woman oran old man, impaled on the horn of a bull or ripped open by therending antler of an elk. As Grôm and his men came shouting across thelevel a huge woolly rhinoceros plunged over the barrier, his bloodyhorn ploughing the carcases, trod down a couple of the defenders withoutappearing to see them, dashed through the nearest fire, and chargedblindly into the Cave-mouth with his matted coat all ablaze. Thechildren and old women who had not already fled down to the beachshrieked in horror. The frantic monster heeded them not at all, but wentthundering on into the bowels of the cavern. 

"Go back, all you women!" yelled Grôm above the tumult, as he and hismen raced to the barrier. "Get down to the beach with the children. We'll hold the rush back till you get down. Run! Run!"

Sobbing with the fury of the struggle, the women obeyed, darting backand pouncing upon their own little ones--all but A-ya, who remaineddoggedly at Grôm's side. 

"Go, " ordered Grôm fiercely. "The children need you. Get them alldown. "

Sullenly the woman obeyed, seeing he was right, but still lusting forthe fight, though her wearied arm could now do little more than liftthe spear. 

Under the shock of these fresh fighters, with lionlike heads, masterful eyes, and smashing, irresistible weapons, the front ranks ofthe animals recoiled, trampling those behind them; and for a fewminutes the pressure was relieved. Grôm turned to the old men. 

"You go now, " he ordered. 

But they refused. 

"We stay here, " cried one, breathless, but with fire in his ancienteyes. "None too much room on the rafts. " And they fell again grimly tothe fight. 

Grôm laughed proudly. With such mettle even in withered veins, theTribe, he thought, was destined to great things. He turned to the lameslave, whom he had ever favored for his faithfulness. 

"You go! You are lame and cannot run. "

The crouching giant looked up at him with a widemouthed grin. 

"I am no woman, " said he. "I stay and hold them back when you all go. I kill, and kill. And then I go very far. "

He waved one great gnarled hand, dripping with blood, toward the sunand the high spaces of air. 

Before Grôm could answer, from below the southward edge of the plateauthere came a mad, high trumpeting, so loud that every other voice inthat pandemonium was silenced by it. At that dread sound the rabble ofbeasts surged forward again upon the barrier, upon the clubs andspears of the defenders. Up over the brow of the slope came a forestof waving trunks, and tossing tusks, and ponderous black foreheads. 

"The Two-Tails are upon us!" cried Grôm, in a voice of awe. And hisfollowers gasped, as the colossal shapes shouldered up into fullview. 

Grôm looked behind him, and saw the last of the women and children, shepherded vehemently by A-ya with the butt of her spear, vanishingdown the steep toward the beach. 

"It is time for us to go too, " shouted Grôm, clutching the lame slaveby the arm to drag him off. But Ook-ootsk wrenched himself free. 

"I'll hold them back till you get away, " he growled, and drove hisgreat spear into the heart of a bull which came over the barrier atthat instant. Grôm saw it would be useless now to try and save him. With the rest of his band he ran for paths leading down to the beach. It was well, he thought, that the valiant slave should die for theTribe. 

The beasts came over the barrier and the fires like a yelling flood. But now, finding all opposition so suddenly withdrawn, the flooddivided upon the massive, thrusting figure of Ook-ootsk as upon ablack rock in mid-stream. It united again behind him, surgingpell-mell for the Cave-mouths, where in the crush the weaker andlighter were savagely torn and trampled underfoot. 

Then the Mammoths came thundering and trumpeting across the plateau, going through and over the lesser beasts like a tidal wave. Grôm, having seen the last of his warriors pass down the beach paths, turnedfor one more glimpse of the monstrous and incredible scene. He had aswift vision of the squatting form of Ook-ootsk thrusting upward withreddened spear at the breast of a black monster which hung over himlike a mountain. Then the mountain rolled forward upon him, blottinghim out, and Grôm slipped hurriedly over the brink and down the path. 

 * * * * *

At the rafts it was bedlam. A score or more of the women and children, as they were crossing to the water's edge, had been wiped out ofexistence by the rush of maddened bison along the beach, and thekeenings of their relatives rose above the shouts and cries ofembarkation. Fully half the rafts were afloat, with their loads, bynow, and men grunted heavily in the effort to pry the others free, while women and children crowded into the water around them, waitingto struggle aboard as soon as the men would let them. 

As Grôm and his panting band, covered with blood from head to foot, reached the waterside and flung their dripping weapons upon the rafts, a fringe of animals came over the edge of the steep, crowded asidefrom the caves. Some, being sure-footed, like the lions and bears, made their way with care down the paths. Others, pushed over andstruggling frantically, came rolling downward, bouncing from rock andledge, and landing on the beach a mass of broken bones. Then behindthem, along the brink, black and gigantic against the blue sky-line, appeared a group of the Mammoths. They waved their long trunks, andtrumpeted piercingly, but hesitated to try the descent. 

"Hurry! hurry!" thundered Bawr, straining at the stranded timbers tillthe great veins stood out on neck and forehead as if they wouldburst. 

Under the added efforts of Grôm and his band the last of the raftsfloated. The children were thrown aboard, the women clambered afterthem, and the men, wading and guiding, lest the rafts should groundagain, began to follow cautiously. 

At this moment, along the beach came a new rush of animals--chieflybuffalo, headed by three huge white rhinoceros. These all seemed quiteblind with panic. They dashed on straight ahead, paying no heedwhatever either to the people on the rafts or to the other beastscoming down the steep. On their heels thundered a second herd ofMammoths, their trunks held high in the air, the red caverns of theirmouths wide open. 

As these colossal, rolling bulks came abreast of the rafts, a childshrieked at the terrifying sight. The leader of the herd turned hismalignant little eye upon the rafts, seeming to perceive them for thefirst time. Without pausing in his huge stride he reached down histrunk, whipped it about the waist of Bawr, and swung him aloft, crushing in his ribs with the terrific pressure, and carried him alonghigh in the air above the trumpeting ranks. 

A howl of rage went up from the rafts; and A-ya, whose bow was quickas thought, let fly an arrow before Grôm could stay her hand. Theshaft struck deep in the monster's trunk. Dashing down its lifelessvictim among the feet of the herd, the monster tried to turn back totake vengeance for the strange wound. But unable to stem the avalanchebehind, it was borne up the beach, screaming with rage. 

Grôm, who was now sole chief and master of the tribe, signed everyraft to push out into deep water, beyond reach of further attack. Withall responsibility now upon his shoulders, he had little time togrieve for the death of Bawr, who, after all, had died greatly, as aChief should. The rafts were now traveling inland at a fair rate, onthe last half-hour of the flood; and, as the estuary narrowed rapidlyabove their starting-place, he hoped to be able, during the slack oftide, to work the clumsy rafts well over towards the northern shorebefore getting caught in the full strength of the ebb. As he studiedout this problem, and urged the warriors to their utmost effort on theheavy and awkward pole-paddles, he kept puzzling all the time over thegreat mystery. What was it that swept even the mighty mammoths beforeits face? How should he name the Fear?

Then all at once, when the rafts were about three or four hundredyards out from shore, he saw. A low cry of wonder broke from his lips, and was reechoed in chorus from all the burdened rafts. 

Down over the heights where the Cave Folk had been dwelling, up alongthe beach from which the rafts had just escaped, in countlessravening, snapping swarms, poured hyenas by the myriad--huge hyenas, bigger than the mightiest timber wolves, their deep-jowled headscarried close to the ground. It was clear in a moment that they weremad with hunger, driven by nothing but their own raging appetites. They fled from nothing, but some of them stopped, in strugglingmasses, to devour the bodies of the beasts which they found slain, while the rest poured on insatiably, to pull down by sheer weight ofnumbers and the might of their bone-crushing jaws the mightiest of themonsters which fled before them. Here and there a mammoth cow, maddened by the slaughter of her calf, or an old rhinoceros bull, indignant at being hunted by such vermin, would turn and run amuckthrough the mass, stamping them out by the hundred. But this made noimpression at all, either upon their numbers or the rage of theirhunger, and in a few minutes the colossus, its feet half eaten off, would come crashing down, to be swarmed over and disappear like a fatgrub in an ant-heap. Here and there, too, a mammoth, more sagaciousthan its fellows, would wade out belly deep into the water--uponfinding its escape cut off--and stand there plucking its foes one byone from the shore to trample them under its feet, screaming shrilltriumph. 

Grôm turned with a deep breath from the unspeakable spectacle, lookedacross to the green line of the opposite shore, and thanked hisunknown gods that it was so far off. With that great river rolling itsflood between, he thought the Tribe might rest secure from thesefiends and once more build up its fortunes. 

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAKE OF LONG SLEEP

Driven from their home beside the Bitter Water by the greatmigration of the beasts, the Tribe of the Cave Folk, diminished innumbers and stricken in spirit, had escaped on rafts across thebroad river-estuary which washed the northern border of theirdomain. There they had found a breathing-space, but it had proved aperilous one. The whole region north of the estuary was littlebetter than a steaming swamp, infested with poisonous snakes andinsects, and with strange monsters, survivals from a still earlierage, whose ferocity drove the Cave Folk back to their ancestral lifein the tree-tops. Under these conditions it was all but impossibleto keep alight the sacred fires--as precious to the tribe as lifeitself--which they had brought with them in their flight upon therafts. And Grôm, the Chief, saw his harassed people in danger ofsinking back into the degradation from which his discovery andconquest of fire had so wonderfully uplifted them. 

From the top of a solitary jobo tree, which towered above the ranksurrounding jungle, Grôm could make out what looked like a low bank ofpurple cloud along the western and north-western horizon. As it wasalways there, whenever he climbed to look at it, he concluded that itwas not a cloud-bank, but a line of hills. Where there were hillsthere might be caves. In any case, the People must have some betterplace to inhabit than this region of swamps and monsters. The way tothat blue line of promise lay across what would surely be the path ofthe migrating beasts, if they should take it into their heads to swimacross the river. The possibility was one from which even his resolutespirit shrank. But he felt that he must face any risk in the hope ofwinning his way to those cloudy hills. Within an hour of his reachingthis decision the Tribe of the Cave Folk was once more on the march. 

The first few days of the march were like a nightmare. Grôm led theway along the shore of the river, both because that seemed theshortest way to the hills, and because, in case of emergency, the openwater afforded a door of escape by raft. Had it been possible to makethe journey by raft matters would have been simplified; but Grôm hadalready proved by experience that his heavy unwieldy rafts could notbe forced upwards against the mighty current of the river. At the lastpoint to which the flood-tides would carry them the rafts had beenabandoned--herded together into a quiet cove, and lashed to the shoreby twisted vine-ropes against some possible future need. 

At the head of the dismal march went Grôm, with his mate A-ya, and hertwo children, and the hairy little scout Loob, whose feet were asquick as his eyes and ears and nostrils, and whose sinews were asuntiring as those of the gray wolf. Immediately behind these came themain body of the warriors, on a wide line so as to guard againstsurprise on the flank. Then followed the women and children, bunchedas closely as possible behind the center of the line; and a knot ofpicked warriors, under young Mô, the brother of A-ya, guarded therear. There were no old men and women, all these having gone down inthe last great battle at the Caves, selling their lives as dearly aspossible to cover the retreat. Such of the young women as had no smallchildren to carry bore the heavy burdens of the fire-baskets, orbundles of smoke-dried meat, leaving the warriors free to use theirbows and spears. 

In traversing the swamp the march was sometimes at ground-level, sometimes high in the tree-tops. In the tree-tops it was safer, butthe progress was slow and laborious. At ground-level the swarms ofstinging insects were always with them, till Grôm invented the use ofsmudges. When every alternate member of the tribe carried a torch ofdry grass and half-green bark, the march was enveloped in a cloud ofacrid smoke, which the insects found more or less disconcerting. 

Of the grave perils of this weary march to the hills a single instancemay suffice. The nights, as a rule, were passed by the whole tribe inthe tree-tops, both for the greater security, and because there wasseldom enough dry ground to sleep upon. But one evening, towardsunset, they came upon a sort of little island in the reeking jungle. Its surface was four or five feet above the level of the swamp. Thetrees which dotted it were smooth, straight, towering shafts with widefans of foliage at their far-off tops. And the ground between theseclean, symmetrical trunks was unencumbered, being clothed only with arich, soft, spicy-scented herbage, akin to the thymes and mints. Suchan opportunity for rest and refreshment was not to be let slip, andGrôm ordered an immediate halt. 

A fat, pig-like water beast, of the nature of the dugong, had beenspeared that day in a bayou beside the line of march, and with greatcontentment the tribe settled themselves down to such a comfortablefeasting as they had not known for many days. While the fat dugong wasbeing hacked to pieces and divided under the astute direction of A-ya, Grôm made haste to establish the camp-fires in a chain completelyencircling the encampment, as a protection against night-prowlers fromthe surrounding jungle. As darkness fell the flames lit up the soaringtrunks, but the roof of the over-arching foliage was so high that thesmoky illumination was lost in it. 

While the rest of the tribe gave itself up to the feasting, Grôm andLoob, and half a dozen of the other warriors, kept vigilant watchwhilst they ate, distrusting the black depths of jungle and the deep, reed-fringed pools beyond the circle of light. Suddenly, all along oneside of the island there arose a sound of heavy splashing, and out ofthe darkness came a row of small, malignant eyes, all fixed upon thefeasters. Then into the circle of light swam the masks of giantalligators and strange, tusked caymans. Quite unawed by the fires theycame ashore with a clumsy rush, open-mouthed. 

While the clamoring women snatched the children away to the other sideof the encampment, Grôm and the other warriors hurled themselves uponthe hideous invaders as they came waddling with amazing nimbleness inbetween the fires. But these were no assailants to be met with bow andspear. At Grôm's sharp orders each warrior snatched a blazing brandfrom the fire, and drove it into the gaping throat of his nearestassailant. In their stupid ferocity the monsters invariably bit uponthe brand before they realized its nature. Then, bellowing with pain, they wheeled about and scrambled back toward the water, lashing outwith their gigantic tails, so that three of the warriors were knockedover and half a dozen of the fires were scattered. 

The feasters had hardly more than settled down after this startlingvisitation, when from the darkness inland came a hoarse, hooting cry, followed by a succession of crashing thuds, as if a pair of mammothswere playing leap-frog in the jungle. All the men sprang again totheir weapons, and stood waiting, in a sudden hush, straining theireyes into the perilous dark. Some of the women herded the childreninto the very center of the island, while others fed the fires withfeverish haste. The hooting call, and the heavy, leaping thuds, camenearer and nearer at a terrifying speed; and suddenly, amid thefar-off, vaguely-lighted tangle of the tree-trunks appeared a giantform, seven or eight times the height of Grôm himself. Leaping uponits mighty hind-legs, and holding its mailed fore-paws before itschest, it came bounding like a colossal kangaroo through the jungle, smashing down the branches and smaller trees as it came, and balancingitself at each spring with its massive, reptilian tail. Its vast head, something like a cross between that of a monstrous horse and that ofan alligator, was upborne upon a long, snaky neck, and its eyes, hugeand round and lidless, were like two discs of shining and enamelledmetal where they caught the flash of the camp-fires. 

This appalling shape had apparently no dread whatever of the flames. When it was within some thirty or forty yards of the line of fire, Grôm yelled an order and a swarm of arrows darted from the bows tomeet it. But they fell futile from its armored hide, which gleamedlike dull bronze in the fire-light. Grôm shouted again, and this timethe warriors hurled their spears--and they, too, fell harmless fromthe monster's armor. Its next crashing bound brought the monster tothe edge of the encampment, where one of its ponderous feetobliterated a fire. With a lightning swoop of its gigantic head itseized the nearest warrior in its jaws and swung him, screaming, highinto the air, as a heron might snatch up a sprawling frog. At the sameinstant A-ya, who was the one unerring archer in the tribe, let fly anarrow which pierced full half its length into the center of one ofthose horrifying enamelled eyes; while Grôm, who alone, of all thewarriors, had not recoiled in terror, succeeded in driving a speardeep into the unarmored inner side of the monster's thigh. But boththese wounds, dreadful though they were, failed to make the colossusdrop its prey. With mighty, braying noises through its nostrils itbrushed the spear shaft from its hold like a straw, flopped about, andwith the arrow still sticking in its eye, went leaping off again intothe darkness to devour its victim. 

For several hours, with the fires trebled in number and stirred tofiercer heat, the tribe waited for the monster to return and claimanother victim. But it did not return. At length Grôm concluded thathis spear-head in its groin and A-ya's arrow in its eye had given itsomething else to think of. Once more he set the guards, and graduallythe tribe, inured to horrors, settled itself down to sleep. It sleptout the rest of the night without disturbance--but the followingnight, and the next two nights thereafter, were spent in thetree-tops. Then, on the fourth day, the harassed travelers emergedfrom the swamp into a pleasant region of grassy, mimosa-dotted, gently-rolling plain. The hills, now showing green and richly wooded, were not more than a day's march ahead. 

And just here, as the Fates which had of late been pursuing them wouldhave it, the worn travelers found themselves once more in the line ofthe hordes of migrating beasts. 

Grôm's heart sank. To reach the refuge of the hills across the marchof those maddened hordes was obviously impossible. Were his people tobe forced back into the swamp, to resume the cramped and ape-like lifeamong the branches? Having ordered the building of a half-circle offire around a spur of the jungle, he climbed a tree to reconnoiter. 

The river ran but a mile or two distant upon his left. Immediatelybefore him the fleeing beasts were not numerous, consisting merely ofsmall herds and terrified stragglers. Further out, however, toward thehills, the plain was blackened by the fugitives, who were thrust on bythe myriads swimming the river behind them. Assuredly, it was not tobe thought of that he should attempt to lead his people across thepath of that desperate flight. But a point that Grôm noted with reliefwas that only certain kinds of beasts had ventured the crossing of theriver. He saw no bears, lions or saber-tooths among those streaminghordes. He saw deer of every kind--good swimmers all of them--withimmense, rolling herds of buffalo and aurochs, and scattered companiesof the terrible siva moose, and some bands of the giant elk, theirantlers topping the mimosa thickets. Here and there, lumbering alongsullenly as if reluctant to retreat before any peril, journeyed a hugerhinoceros, stopping from time to time for a few hurried mouthfuls ofthe rich plains grass. But as yet there was not a mammoth insight--whereat Grôm wondered, as he thought they would have been amongthe first to dare the crossing of the river. Had they kept on up theother shore, hesitating to trust their colossal bulks to the current, or had they turned at bay, at last, in uncontrollable indignation, andgone down before the countless hordes of their ignoble assailants?

The absence of the mammoths, which he dreaded more than all the otherbeasts because of the fierce intelligence that gleamed in their eyes, decided Grôm. He would lead his people along to the right, skirtingthe swamp and marching parallel to the flight of the beasts, calculating thus to have the jungle always for a refuge, though notfor a dwelling, until they should come to a region of hills and cavestoo difficult for the migrating beasts to traverse. 

For several days this plan answered to a marvel. The fugitives nearestto the swamp-edge were mostly deer of various species, which swervedaway nervously from the line of march, but at the same time affordedsuch good hunting that the travelers revelled in abundance and rapidlyrecovered their spirits. Once, when a great wave of maddened buffalosurged over upon them, the whole tribe fled back into the jungle, clambering into the trees, and stabbing down, with angry shouts, atthe nearest of their assailants. But the assault was a blind one. Thebuffalo, a black mass that seemed to foam with tossing horns androlling eyes, soon passed on to their unknown destination. And thetribe, dropping down from the branches, quite cheerfully resumed itsmarch. 

On the fifth day of the march they saw the jungle on their right cometo an end. It was succeeded by a vast expanse of shallow mere dottedwith half-drowned, rushy islets, and swarming with crocodiles. Aftersome hesitation, Grôm decided to go on, though he was uneasy aboutforsaking the refuge of the trees. Some leagues ahead, however, and alittle toward the left, he could see a low, thick-wooded hill, whichhe thought might serve the tribe for a shelter. With many misgivings, he led the way directly towards it, swerving out across the path of avast but straggling horde of sambur deer which seemed almostexhausted. 

To Grôm's surprise these stately and beautiful animals showed neitherhostility nor fear toward human beings. According to all his previousexperience, the attitude of every beast toward man was one of fear orfierce hate. These sambur, on the contrary, seemed rather to welcomethe companionship of the tribe, as if looking to it for someprotection against the strange pursuing peril. His sleepless sagacityperceiving the value of this great escort as a buffer against thecontact of less kindly hordes, Grôm gave strict orders that none ofthese beasts should be molested. And the Cave Folk, not withoutapprehension, found themselves traveling in the vanguard of an army oftall, high-antlered beasts which stared at them with mild eyes ofinquiry and appeal. 

Marching at their best speed, the Tribe kept easily in the van of thedistressed sambur, and more than once in the next few hours, Grôm hadreason to congratulate himself upon his venture into this strangefellowship. First, for instance, he saw a herd of black buffaloovertake the sambur host and dash heavily into its rear ranks. Thefrightened sambur closed up, instead of scattering, and the impetus ofthe buffalo presently spent itself upon the unresisting mass. Theyedged their way through to the left leaving swathes of gored andtrodden sambur in their wake, and went thundering off on another lineof retreat, caroming into a herd of aurochs, which fought them off andpunished them murderously. It was obvious to Grôm, as he studied thedust-clouds of this last encounter, that the buffalo herd, here in theopen, would have rolled over the tribe irresistibly, and trampled itflat. 

Journeying thus at top speed toward that hill of promise before them, the travelers came at length to a wide space of absolutely levelground which presented a most curious appearance. It was as level as awindless lake, and almost without vegetation. The naked surface was ofa sort of indeterminate dust-color, but dotted here and there withtiny patches of vegetation so stunted that it was little more thanmoss. Grôm, with his inquiring mind, would have liked to stop toinvestigate this curious surface, unlike anything he had ever seenbefore. But the hordes of the sambur were behind, pressing the tribeonwards, and straight ahead was the wooded hill, dense with foliage, luring with its promise of safe and convenient shelter. He led theway, therefore, without hesitation, out across the baked and barrenwaste, sniffing curiously, as he went, at a strange smell, pungent butnot unpleasant, which steamed up from the dry, hot surface all abouthim. 

The first peculiarity that he noticed was a remarkable springiness inthe surface upon which he trod. Then he was struck by the fact thatthe dust-brown surface was seamed and criss-crossed in many places bysmall cracks--like those in sun-scorched mud, except that the crackswere almost black in color. These things caused him no misgivings. Butpresently, to his consternation, he detected a slight but amazingundulation, an immensely long, immensely slow wave rolling across thedry surface before him. He could hardly believe his eyes--forassuredly nothing could look more like good solid land than thatstretch of barren plain. He stopped short, rubbing his eyes in wonder. A-ya grabbed him by the arm. 

"What is it?" she whispered, staring at the unstable surface in a kindof horror. 

Before he could reply, cries and shouts arose among the tribe behindhim, and they all rushed forward, almost sweeping Grôm and A-ya fromtheir feet. 

The surface of the barren, all along the edge of the grass land, had given way beneath the weight of the sambur herds, and the frontranks were being engulfed with frantic snortings and awful groans, in what looked like a dense, blackish, glistening ooze. The ranksbehind were being forced forward to this awful doom, in spite oftheir panic-stricken struggles to hold back; and it was thepressure of this battling mass that was creating the horrible, bulging undulation on the plain. 

Grôm's quick intelligence took in the situation on the instant. The naked brown surface beneath the feet of the tribe was nothingmore than a thin crust overlying a lake of some dense, dark, strange-smelling liquid. 

His first impulse, naturally, was to turn back--and A-ya, with wideeyes of terror, was already dragging fiercely at his elbow. But toturn back was utterly impossible. That way lay the long strip ofengulfing pitch, swallowing up insatiably the ranks of the groaningand kicking sambur. There was but one possible way of escape leftopen, and that was straight ahead. 

But would the crust continue to uphold them? Already, under the weightof the whole tribe pressing together, it was beginning to saghideously. With furious words and blows he tried to make the tribescatter to right and left, so as to spread the pressure as widely aspossible. Perceiving his purpose, A-ya and Loob, and several of theleading warriors, seconded his efforts with frantic vehemence; till ina few minutes the whole tribe, amazed and quaking with awe, wasextended like a fan over a front of three or four hundred yards. Seeing that the perilous sagging of the crust was at once relieved, Grôm then ordered the tribe to advance cautiously, keeping the samewide-open formation, while he himself brought up the rear. 

But in a few minutes every one, from Grôm downwards, came to a haltirresistibly, in order to watch the monstrous drama unfolding behindthem. 

For nearly half a mile to either side of their immediate rear, betweenthe still unbroken surface of the dust-brown expanse and the edge ofthe trampled grassy plain, stretched a sort of canal, perhaps tenpaces wide, of brown-black, glistening pitch, beaten up with thrashingantlers, and tossing heads that whistled despairingly through widenostrils, and heaving, agonizing bulks that went down slowly to theirdoom. After several ranks of the herd had been engulfed those nextbehind turned about in terror and fought madly to force their way backfrom the fatal brink. But the inexorable masses behind them rolledthem on backwards, and slowly they too were thrust down into thepitch, till the canal was filled to the brink, and writhed horriblyalong its whole length. By this time, however, the alarm had spreadthrough the rest of the sambur ranks. By a desperate effort they gotthemselves turned, and went surging off to the left in a directionparallel to the edge of the plain of death. 

Thrilled with the wonder and the horror of it, Grôm drew a deep breathand relaxed the tension of his watching. He was just about to turn andorder the tribe forward again, when he was arrested by the sight of avast cloud of dust rolling up swiftly upon the left flank of theretreating sambur. 

A confused cry of alarm went up from the watching tribe, as they saw aforest of waving trunks appear in the front of the dust-cloud. Asecond or two more and a long array of mammoths emerged along the pathof the cloud. Among the mammoths, here and there, raced a black or awhite rhinoceros, or a towering, spotted giraffe. Behind this frontrank, vague and portentous through the veiling cloud, came furthercolossal hordes, filling the distance as far as eye could see. 

This advance looked as if nothing on earth, not even the lake ofpitch, could ever stop it, and certain of the tribe started to flee. But Grôm, after a moment of misgiving and hasty calculation, checkedthe flight sternly. He must, at all risks see the incredible thingthat was about to happen. And he felt certain that, at this distanceout upon the crust of the gulf, the tribe would be secure. 

The stupendous wave of dust and waving trunks and galloping blackbulks thundered up at a terrific pace, and fell with irresistibleimpact upon the flank of the marching sambur. These unhappy beastswent down like grass before it. They were rolled flat, trodden outlike a fire in thin grass, annihilated. And the screaming, trumpetingmonsters, hardly aware that there had been an obstacle in their path, arrived at the edge of the canal. 

Here and there an old bull, leading, took alarm, trumpeted wildly, andstrove to stop. But the belt of pitch was full to the brink with thepacked bodies of the sambur, and did not look to be a very seriousbarrier to the spacious brown levels beyond it. Moreover, the panic ofa long flight was upon them, and the rear ranks were thrusting themon. The trumpeting leaders were overborne in a twinkling. Theponderous feet of the front rank sank into the mass of bodies andhorns and pitch, stumbled forward, belly deep, and strove to clamberout upon the solid-looking further edge. With trunks eagerlyoutstretched as if seeking to grip something, the huge, bat-earedheads heaved themselves up. The next moment the treacherous crustcrumbled away beneath them like an eggshell, and with screams thattore the heavens they sank into the gulfs of pitch. The next two orthree ranks went over on them, trod them deeper down, heaved andsurged and battled for some moments along the edge of the crumblingcrust. With mad trumpetings, they were themselves swallowed up in thatsluggish, implacable flood. Here and there a black trunk, twisting inagony, lingered long, awful moments above the pitch. Here and therethe pallid head of a giraffe, tongue protruding and eyes bursting fromtheir sockets, stood up rigid on its long neck and screamedhideously. 

As the thick tide closed slowly, slowly over its prey, the hosts inthe rear, having taken alarm at the agonized trumpetings, succeeded bya gigantic effort in checking their career. Those nearest the edge ofdoom reared up and fell back upon those next behind, to be ripped withfrantic tusks in the mad confusion. But presently the whole colossalarray brought itself to a halt, got itself turned to the left, andwent thundering off on the trail of the sambur remnants. 

Grôm stood staring for a long time, with wide, brooding eyes, at thestill-bubbling and heaving breadths of dark pitch. He was stunned bythe sudden engulfing and utter disappearance of such a monstroushorde. He seemed to see the countless gigantic shapes heaped one uponthe other, laid to their long sleep there in the deeps of the pitch. At last he shook himself, passed his shaggy hand over his eyes, andshouted to the tribe that all was well. Then he set himself once moreat their head, and led them, slowly and cautiously, onward across thedreadful level, till they gained the shelter of that sweetly woodedand rivulet-watered hill. 

THE END