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+Project Gutenberg's In the Morning of Time, by Charles G. D. Roberts
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In the Morning of Time
+
+Author: Charles G. D. Roberts
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2009 [EBook #28936]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE MORNING OF TIME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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--a
+placid, horse-faced, shovel-nosed head, with bumpy holes for ears and
+immense round eyes of a somewhat anxious mildness.
+
+The anxiety in the great eyes was not without reason, for their owner
+had just arrived in the tepid and teeming waters of this estuary, and
+the creatures which he had already seen about him were both unknown
+and menacing. But the inshore shallows were full of water-weeds of a
+rankness and succulence far beyond anything he had enjoyed in his old
+habitat, and he was determined to secure himself a place here.
+
+From time to time, as some new monster came in sight, the ungainly
+head would shoot up amazingly to a distance of five or ten, or even
+fifteen feet, on a swaying pillar of a neck, in order to get a better
+view of the stranger. Then it would slowly sink back again to its
+repose on the water.
+
+The water at this point was almost fresh, because the estuary, though
+fully two miles wide, was filled with the tide of the great river
+rolling slowly down from the heart of the continent. The further shore
+was so flat that nothing could be seen of it but an endless, pale
+green forest of giant reeds. But the nearer shore was skirted, at a
+distance of perhaps half a mile from the water, by a rampart of
+abrupt, bright, rust-red cliffs. The flat land between the waterside
+and the cliffs, except for the wide strip of beach, was clothed with
+an enormous and riotous growth of calamaries, tree-ferns, cane and
+palm, which rocked and crashed in places as if some colossal wayfarers
+were pushing through them. Here and there along the edge of the cliffs
+sat tall beings with prodigious, saw-toothed beaks, like some species
+of bird conceived in a nightmare.
+
+Far out across the water one of these creatures was flapping slowly in
+from the sea. Its wings--eighteen feet across from tip to tip--were
+not 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 a
+lizard.
+
+As this startling shape came flapping shoreward, the head afloat upon
+the water eyed it with interest, but not, as it seemed, with any great
+apprehension. Yet it certainly looked formidable enough to excite
+misgivings in most creatures. Its flight was not the steady, even
+winging of a bird, but spasmodic and violent. It came on at a height
+of perhaps twenty feet above the sluggish tide, and its immense,
+circular eyes appeared to take no notice of the strange head that
+watched it from the water's surface. It seemed about to pass a little
+to one side, when suddenly, with a hoarse, hooting cry, it swerved and
+swooped, and struck at the floating head with open jaws.
+
+Swift as was that unexpected attack, the assailant struck nothing but
+a spot of foam where the head had disappeared. Simultaneously with the
+lightning disappearance, there was a sudden boiling of the water some
+eighty-odd feet away. But the great bird-lizard was either too furious
+to notice this phenomenon or not sagacious enough to interpret it.
+Flopping into the air again, and gnashing his beak-like jaws with
+rage, he kept circling about the spot in heavy zigzags, expecting the
+harmless looking head to reappear.
+
+All at once his expectations were more than realized. The head not
+only reappeared, but on a towering leather-colored column of a neck it
+shot straight into the air to a height of twenty feet. The big, placid
+eyes were now sparkling with anger. The flat, shovel jaws were gaping
+open. They seized the swooping foe by the root of the tail, and, in
+spite of screeches and wild flappings, plucked him down backwards. At
+the surface of the water there was a convulsive struggle, and the wide
+wings were drawn clean under.
+
+For several minutes the water seethed and foamed, and little waves ran
+clattering up the beach, while the owner of the harmless-looking head
+trod his assailant down and crushed him among the weeds of the bottom.
+Then the foam slowly crimsoned, and the mauled, battered body of the
+great bird-lizard came up again; for the owner of the mysterious head
+was a feeder on delicate weeds and succulent green-stuff only, and
+would eat no blood-bearing food. The body was still struggling, and
+the vast, dark, broken wings spread themselves in feeble spasms on the
+surface. But they were not left to struggle long.
+
+The water, in the distance, had been full of eager spectators of
+the fight, and now it boiled as they rushed in upon the disabled
+prey. Ravenous, cavern-jawed, fishlike beasts, half-porpoise,
+half-alligator, swarmed upon the victim, tearing at it and at each
+other. Some bore off trailing mouthfuls of dark wing-membrane,
+others more substantial booty, while the rest fought madly in the
+vortex of discolored foam.
+
+At the beginning of the fray the grim figures perched along the red
+ramparts of the cliff had shown signs of excitement, lifting their
+high shoulders and half unfolding the stiff drapery of their wings. As
+they saw their fellow overwhelmed they launched themselves from their
+perch and came hooting hoarsely over the rank, green tops of the palms
+and feathery calamaries. Swooping and circling they gathered over the
+hideous final struggle, and from time to time one or another would
+drop perpendicularly downward to stab the crown or the face of one of
+the preoccupied fish-beasts with his trenchant beak. Such of the
+fish-beasts as were thus disabled were promptly torn to pieces and
+devoured by their companions.
+
+Some fifty feet away, nearer shore, the harmless-looking head which
+had been the source and inspirer of all this bloody turmoil lay
+watching the scene with discontent in its round, wondering eyes.
+Slowly it reared itself once more to a height of eight or ten feet
+above the water, as if for better inspection of the combat. Then, as
+if not relishing the neighborhood of the fish-beasts, it slowly sank
+again and disappeared.
+
+Immediately a heavy swirling, a disturbance that stretched over a
+distance of nearly a hundred feet, began to travel shoreward. It
+grew heavier and heavier as the water grew shallower. Then a
+leather-colored mountain of a back heaved itself up through the
+smother and a colossal form, that would make the hugest elephant a
+pigmy, came ponderously forth upon the beach.
+
+The body of this amazing being was thrice or four times the bulk of
+the mightiest elephant. It stood highest--a good thirteen feet--over
+the haunches (which were supported on legs like columns), and sloped
+abruptly to the lower and lighter-built fore-shoulders. The neck was
+like a giraffe's, but over twenty feet in length to its juncture with
+the mild little head, which looked as if Nature had set it there as a
+pleasantry at the expense of the titanic body. The tail, enormous at
+the base and tapering gradually to a whip-lash, trailed out to a
+distance of nearly fifty feet. As its owner came ashore, this
+tremendous tail was gathered and curled in a semi-circle at his
+side--perhaps lest the delicate tip, if left too distant, might fall a
+prey to some significant but agile marauder.
+
+For some minutes the colossus (he was one of the Dinosaurs, or
+Terrible Lizards, and known as a Diplodocus) remained on all-fours,
+darting his sinuous neck inquiringly in all directions, and
+snatching here and there a mouthful of the rank tender herbage which
+grew among the trunks of fern and palm. Apparently the spot was to
+his liking. Here was a wide beach, sunlit and ample, whereon to bask
+at leisure. There were the warm and weed-choked shallows wherein to
+pasture, to wallow at will, to hide his giant bulk from his enemies if
+there should be found any formidable enough to make hiding advisable.
+Swarms of savage insects, to be sure, were giving him a hot
+reception--mosquitoes of unimaginable size, and enormous stinging
+flies which sought to deposit their eggs in his smooth hide, but with
+his giraffe-like neck he could bite himself where he would, and the
+lithe lash of his tail could flick off tormentors from any corner
+of his anatomy.
+
+Meanwhile, the excitement off-shore had died down. The harsh hootings
+of the bird-lizards had ceased to rend the air as the dark wings
+hurtled 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 himself
+upon his hind-quarters, till he sat up like a kangaroo, supported and
+steadied by the base of his huge tail. In this position his head,
+forty feet above the earth, overlooked the tops of all but the tallest
+trees. And what he saw brought the look of anxiety once more into his
+round, saucer-eyes.
+
+Hurling itself with desperate, plunging leaps through the rank
+growths, and snapping the trunks of the brittle tree-ferns in its path
+as if they had been cauliflowers, came a creature not unlike himself,
+but of less than half the size, and with neck and tail of only
+moderate length. This creature was fleeing in frantic terror from
+another and much smaller being, which came leaping after it like a
+giant kangaroo. Both were plainly dinosaurs, with the lizard tail and
+hind-legs; but the lesser of the two, with its square, powerful head
+and tiger-fanged jaws, and the tremendous, rending claws on its short
+forearms, was plainly of a different species from the great
+herb-eaters of the dinosaurian family. It was one of the smaller
+members of that terrible family of carnivorous dinosaurians which
+ruled the ancient cycad forests as the black-maned lion rules the
+Rhodesian jungles to-day. The massive iguanodon which fled before it
+so madly, though of fully thrice its bulk, had reason to fear it as
+the fat cow fears a wolf.
+
+A moment more, and the dreadful chase, with a noise of raucous groans
+and pantings, burst forth into the open, not fifty feet from where the
+colossus stood watching. Almost at the watcher's feet the fugitive was
+overtaken. With a horrid leap and a hoot of triumph, the pursuer
+sprang upon its neck and bore it to the ground, where it lay bellowing
+hoarsely and striking out blunderingly with the massive, horn-tipped
+spur which armed its clumsy wrist. The victor tore madly at its throat
+with tooth and claw, and presently its bellowing subsided to a
+hideous, sobbing gurgle.
+
+The diplodocus, meanwhile, had been looking down upon the scene with
+half-bewildered apprehension. These creatures were insignificant in
+size, to be sure, as compared with his own colossal stature, but the
+smaller one had a swift ferocity which struck terror to his dull
+heart.
+
+Suddenly a red wrath mounted to his small and sluggish brain. His
+tail, as we have seen, was curled in a half-circle at his side. Now he
+bent his body with it. For an instant his whole bulk quivered with the
+extraordinary tension. Then, like a bow released, the bent body sprang
+back. The tail (and it weighed at least a ton) struck the victor and
+the victim together with an annihilating shock, and swept them clean
+around beneath the visitor's feet.
+
+Down he came upon them at once, with the crushing effect of a hundred
+steam pile-drivers; and for the next few minutes his panicky rage
+expended itself in treading the two bodies into a shapeless mass. Then
+he slowly backed off down into the water where the weedy growths were
+thickest, till once more his whole form was concealed except the
+insignificant head. This he reared among the swaying tufts of the
+"mares' tails," and waited to see what strange thing would happen
+next.
+
+He had not long to wait. That hideous, mangled heap there, sweating
+blood in the noon sun, seemed to have some way of making its presence
+known. Crashing sounds arose in different parts of the forest, and
+presently some half-dozen of the leaping, kangaroo-like flesh-eaters
+appeared.
+
+They were of varying sizes, from ten or twelve feet in length to
+eighteen or twenty, and they eyed each other with jealous hostility.
+But one glance at the weltering heap showed them that here was
+feasting abundant for them all. With a chorus of hoarse cries they
+came hopping forward and fell upon it.
+
+Presently two vast shadows came overhead, hovering a moment, and a
+pair of the great bird-lizards dropped upon the middle of the heap.
+Hooting savagely, with wings half uplifted, they struck about them
+with their terrible beaks till they had secured room for themselves at
+the banquet. Other unbidden guests came leaping from among the
+thickets; and in a short time there was nothing left of the carcasses
+except two naked skeletons, dragged apart and half dismembered by
+mighty teeth. In the final melee one of the smaller revellers was
+himself pounced upon and devoured.
+
+Then, as if by consent of a mutual distrust, the throng drew quickly
+apart, each eyeing his neighbor warily, and scattered into the woods.
+Only the two grim bird-lizards remained, seeming to have a sort of
+understanding or partnership, or possibly being a mated pair. They
+pried into the cartilages and between the joints of the skeletons with
+the iron wedges of their beaks, till there was not another tit-bit to
+be enjoyed. Then, hooting once more with satisfaction, they spread
+their batlike vanes and flapped darkly off again to their red
+watch-tower on the cliff.
+
+When all was once more quiet the giant visitor fell to pasturing among
+the crisp and tender water-weeds. It took a long time to fill his
+cavernous paunch by way of that slender neck of his, and when he was
+satisfied he went composedly to sleep, his body perfectly concealed
+under the water, his head resting on a little islet of matted reeds in
+a thicket of "mares' tails." When he woke up again the sun was
+half-way down to the west, and the beach glowed hotly in the afternoon
+light. Everything was drenched in heavy stillness. The visitor made up
+his drowsy mind that he must leave his hiding-place and go and bask in
+that delicious warmth.
+
+He was just bestirring himself to carry out his purpose, when once
+more a swaying in the rank foliage of the cycads caught his vigilant
+eye. Discreetly he drew back into hiding, the place being, as he had
+found it, so full of violent surprises.
+
+Suddenly there emerged upon the beach a monster even more extraordinary
+in appearance than himself. It was about thirty-five feet in length,
+and its ponderous bulk was supported on legs so short and bowed that
+it 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. In
+fact, it was an inoffensive-looking head for such an imposing body.
+At the base of the head began a system of defensive armor that
+looked as if it might be proof against artillery. Up over the
+shoulders, over the mighty arch of the back, and down over the haunches
+as far as the middle of the ponderous tail, ran a series of immense flat
+plates of horn, with pointed tips and sharpened edges. The largest of
+these plates, those that covered the center of the back, were each
+three feet in height, and almost of an equal breadth. Where the
+diminished plates came to an end at the middle of the tail, their
+place 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's
+hide was set thick with scales and knobs of horn, brilliantly
+colored in black, yellow, and green, that his grotesque bulk might
+be less noticeable to his foes among the sharp shadows and patchy lights
+of the fern jungles where he fed.
+
+The sluggish giant moved nervously, glancing backwards as he came, and
+seemed intent upon reaching the water. In a few moments his anxiety
+was explained. Leaping in splendid bounds along his broad trail came
+two of those same ferocious flesh-eaters whom the great watcher among
+the reeds so disliked. They ranged up one on each side of the
+stegosaur, who had halted at their approach, stiffened himself, and
+drawn his head so far back into the loose skin of his neck that only
+the sharp, chopping beak projected from under the first armor-plate.
+One of the pair threatened him from the front, as if to engross his
+attention, while the other pounced upon one of his massive, bowed
+hind-legs, as if seeking to drag it from beneath him and roll him over
+on his side.
+
+But at this instant there was a clattering of the plated hide, and
+that armed tail lashed out with lightning swiftness, like a
+porcupine's. There was a tearing screech from the rash flesh-eater,
+and he was plucked back sidewise, all four feet in air, deeply impaled
+on three of those gigantic spines. While he clawed and writhed,
+struggling to twist himself free, his companion sprang hardily to the
+rescue. She hurled herself with all her weight and strength full upon
+the stegosaur's now unprotected flank. So tremendous was the impact
+that, with a frightened grunt, he was rolled clean over on his side.
+But at the same time his sturdy forearms clutched his assailant, and
+so crushed, mauled and tore her that she was glad to wrench herself
+away.
+
+Coughing and gasping, she bounded backwards out of reach; and then she
+saw that her mate, having wriggled off the spines, was dragging
+himself up the beach toward the forest, leaving a trail of blood
+behind him. She followed sullenly, having had more than enough of the
+venture. The triumphant stegosaur rolled himself heavily back upon his
+feet, grunted angrily, clattered his armored plates, jerked his
+terrible tail from side to side as if to see that it was still in
+working order, and went lumbering off to another portion of the wood,
+having apparently forgotten his purpose of taking to the water. As he
+went, one of the grim bird-lizards from the cliff swooped down and
+hovered, hooting over his path, apparently disappointed at his
+triumph.
+
+The watcher in the reeds, on the other hand, was encouraged by the
+result of the combat. He began to feel a certain dangerous contempt
+for those leaping flesh-eaters, in spite of their swiftness and
+ferocity. He himself, though but an eater of weeds, had trodden one
+into nothingness, and now he had seen two together overthrown and put
+to flight. With growing confidence he came forth from his hiding,
+stalked up the beach, coiled his interminable tail beside him, and lay
+down to bask his dripping sides in the full blaze of the sun.
+
+The colossus was at last beginning to feel at home in his new
+surroundings. In spite of the fact that this bit of open beach,
+overlooked by the deep green belt of jungle and the rampart of red
+cliffs, appeared to be a sort of arena for titanic combats, he began
+to have confidence in his own astounding bulk as a defense against all
+foes. What matter his slim neck, small head and feeble teeth, when
+that 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 pair
+of the great bird-lizards flapped over him, hooting malignantly and
+staring down upon him with their immense, cold eyes, but he hardly
+took 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 time
+above the rush of some unseen giant of a shark or ichthyosaur.
+
+In the heavy heat of the afternoon the young world had become very
+still. The bird-lizards, all folded in their wings, sat stiff and
+motionless along the ramparts of red cliff. The only sounds were the
+hiss of those seething rushes far out on the tide, the sudden droning
+hum of some great insect darting overhead, or the occasional soft
+clatter of the long, crisp cycad leaves as a faint puff of hot air
+lifted them.
+
+At the back of the beach, where the tree-ferns and the calamaries grew
+rankest, the foliage parted noiselessly at a height of perhaps twenty
+feet from the ground, and a dreadful head looked forth. Its jaws were
+both long and massive, and armed with immense, curved teeth like
+scimitars. Its glaring eyes were overhung by eaves of bony plate, and
+from the front of its broad snout rose a single horn, long and sharp.
+For some minutes this hideous apparition eyed the unconscious colossus
+by the waterside. Then it came forth from the foliage and crept
+noiselessly down the beach.
+
+Except for its horned snout and armored eyes, this monster was not
+unlike in general type to those other predatory dinosaurs which had
+already appeared upon the scene. But it was far larger, approaching
+thirty-five feet in length, and more powerfully built in proportion to
+its size; and the armory of its jaws was more appalling. With a
+stealthy but clumsy-looking waddle, which was nevertheless soundless
+as a shadow, and his huge tail curled upwards that it might not drag
+and rattle the stones, he crept down until he was within some fifty
+feet or more of the drowsing colossus.
+
+Some premonition of peril, at this moment, began to stir in the heavy
+brain of the colossus, and he lifted his head apprehensively. In the
+same instant the horned giant gathered himself, and hurled himself
+forward. In two prodigious leaps he covered the distance that
+separated him from his intended prey. The coiled tail of the colossus
+lashed out irresistibly, but the assailant cleared it in his spring,
+fell upon the victim's shoulders, and buried his fangs in the base of
+that columnar neck.
+
+The colossus, for the first time, was overwhelmed with terror. He gave
+vent to a shrill, bleating bellow--an absurdly inadequate utterance to
+issue from this mountainous frame--writhed his neck in snaky folds,
+and lashed out convulsively with the stupendous coils of his tail. But
+he could not loosen that deep grip, or the clutch of those iron
+claws.
+
+In spite of the many tons weight throttling his neck, he reared
+himself aloft, and strove to throw himself over upon his assailant.
+But the marauder was agile, and eluded the crushing fall without
+loosing his grip. Then, bleating frightfully, till the sounds
+re-echoed from the red cliffs and set all the drowsing bird-lizards
+lifting their wings, he plunged down into the tide and bore his
+dreadful adversary out of sight beneath a smother of ensanguined
+foam.
+
+Now, the horned giant was himself a powerful swimmer and quite at home
+in 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; and
+there the colossus, becoming all at once agile and swift, succeeded in
+rolling over upon him. Forced thus to loose his grip, he gave one
+long, ripping lunge with his horn, deep into the victim's flank, and
+then 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, but
+even more reluctant to expose himself to another such mauling in the
+depths. As he hesitated, about a hundred feet away he saw the mild
+little head of the colossus, apparently floating on the tide, and
+regarding him anxiously. That decided him. With a crashing bellow of
+rage and a sweep of his powerful tail he darted at the inoffensive
+head. But it vanished instantly, and a sudden tremendous turmoil,
+developing into a wake that lengthened out with the speed of a
+torpedo-boat, showed him the hopelessness of pursuit. Turning
+abruptly, he swam back to the shore and sulkily withdrew into the
+thickets to seek some less unmanageable quarry.
+
+The colossus, so deeply wounded that his trail threw up great clots
+and bubbles of red foam, swam onward several miles up the estuary. He
+realized now that that patch of sunny beach was just a death-trap. But
+in the middle of the estuary, far out from either shore, far removed
+from the unseen, lurking horrors of the fern forests, spread acre upon
+acre 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 safe
+refuge as well as an unfailing pasturage. But the anguish of his
+wounds 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 dragged
+himself out upon it eagerly. Not until he had gained the very center
+of 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 now
+the sands had a grip upon him, and his efforts only engulfed him the
+more swiftly. He reared upon his hind legs, and immediately found
+himself swallowed to the haunches. He fell forward again, and sank to
+his shoulder-blades. And then, the convulsive thrashings of his tail
+hurling the sands in every direction, he lifted his head and bleated
+piteously.
+
+The struggle had already drawn the dreadful eyes of those grim, folded
+figures perched along the cliff-tops miles away; and now, as if in
+answer to his cry they came fluttering darkly over him. Seeing his
+helplessness, they flapped down upon him with hoots of exultation.
+Their vast beaks tore at his helpless back, and stabbed at the swiftly
+writhing convolutions of his neck. One, more heedless than his
+fellows, came within reach of the thrashing tail, and was dashed, half
+stunned, to earth, where the sands got him in their hold before he
+could recover himself. With dreadful screeches, he was sucked down,
+but his fellows paid no attention to his fate. And meanwhile, in a
+ring about the islet, not daring to come near for terror of the
+quicksand, 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, the
+colossus lost the power to move his head quickly enough to evade the
+attacks of his horrid assailants. A moment more, and he was blinded.
+Then he felt his head enfolded in the strangling membranes of wings
+and borne downwards. Once or twice the convulsions of his neck threw
+his enemies off, and the bleeding, sightless head reemerged to view.
+
+But not only his force, but his will to struggle, was fast ebbing
+away. Presently, with a thunderous, gasping sob, the last breath left
+his mighty lungs, and his head dropped on the sand. It was trodden
+under in an instant; and then, afraid of being engulfed themselves,
+the hooting revellers abandoned it, to crowd struggling upon the
+arched 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 their
+cliffs; and slowly the fluent sand smoothed itself to shining
+complacency over the tomb of the diplodocus, hiding and sealing away
+the 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 some
+two or three hundred thousand years. Monstrous mammals now held sway
+over the fresh, green round of the young earth, so exuberant in her
+youthful vigor that she could not refrain from flooding the Poles
+themselves with a tropical luxuriance of flower and tree. The
+supremacy of the Giant Reptiles had passed.
+
+A few representatives of their most colossal and highly-specialized
+forms still survived, still terrible and supreme in those vast,
+steaming, cane-clothed savannahs which most closely repeated the
+conditions of an earlier age. But Nature, pleased with her experiments
+in the more promising mammalian type, had turned her back upon them
+after 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 heaved
+his terrible, three-horned front from the lilied surface of the lagoon
+wherein he had been wallowing, and came ponderously ploughing his way
+ashore. As he emerged upon dry ground, he halted--with the tip of his
+massive, lizard-like tail still in the water--and shook a shower from
+the hollows of his vast and strangely armored head.
+
+His eyes, coldly furious, and set in a pair of goggle-like projections
+of horn, peered this way and that, as if suspecting the neighborhood
+of a foe. His gigantic snout--horned, cased in horn, and hooked like
+the beak of a parrot--he lifted high, sniffing the heavy air. Then, as
+if to end his doubts by either drawing or daunting off the unknown
+enemy, he opened his grotesquely awful mouth and roared. The huge
+sound that exploded from his throat was something between the bellow
+of an alligator and the coughing roar of a tiger, but of infinitely
+vaster volume.
+
+The next moment, as if in deliberate reply to the challenge, an
+immense 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 terrible
+and perhaps most efficient of the titanic but vanishing race of the
+Dinosaurs, face to face with one of those monstrous mammalian forms
+upon which Nature was now trying her experiments.
+
+And the place of this meeting was not unfitted to such a portentous
+encounter. The further shore of the lagoon was partly a swamp of
+rankest growth, partly a stretch of savannah clothed with rich
+cane-brake and flowering grasses that towered fifteen or twenty feet
+into the air. But the hither shore was of a hard soil mixed with sand,
+carpeted with a short, golden-green herbage, and studded with clumps
+of bamboo, jobo, mango and mahogany, with here and there a thicket of
+canary-flowered acacia, bristling with the most formidable of thorns.
+
+They were not altogether ill-matched, these two colossal protagonists
+of the Saurian and the Mammal. The advantage of bulk lay altogether
+with the Dinosaur, the three-horned King of all the Lizard kind. His
+armament, too, whether for offense or for defense, was distinctly the
+more formidable. Fully twenty feet in length, and perhaps eight feet
+high at the crest of the massively-rounded back, he was of ponderous
+breadth, and moved ponderously on legs like columns.
+
+His splotched brown and yellow hide was studded along the neck and
+shoulders with pointed knobs of horn. His enormous, fleshy tail, some
+seven feet long and nearly two feet thick at the base, tapered very
+gradually to a thick tip, and dragged on the ground behind him. But
+the most amazing thing about this King of the Lizards was his
+monstrous 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. Its
+three horns, one on the snout and two standing out straight forward
+from the forehead just above the eyes, were immensely thick at the
+base and fined down smoothly to points of terrible keenness. The one
+on the snout was something over a foot in length, while the brow pair
+were nearly three feet long.
+
+Almost from the roots of these two terrific weapons protruded the huge
+horn goggles which served as sockets for the great, cold, implacable
+lizard-eyes. Behind the horns, outspreading like a vast ruff from
+three 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 was
+less extravagant in appearance and more compact in form. He was not
+much over a dozen feet in length, but this length owed nothing to the
+tail, which was a mere wriggling pendant. He was, perhaps, seven feet
+high, very sturdy in build, but not mountainous like his terrible
+challenger. His legs and feet were something like those of an
+elephant, 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 his
+chief distinction. Long, massive and blunt-nosed, it was armed not
+only 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 their
+owner for rooting in the turf after the fashion of a tuber-hunting
+pig. The second pair, set about the middle of the long face, just over
+the eyes, were about eighteen inches in length, and redoubtable enough
+to make other weapons seem superfluous.
+
+The third pair, however, were equally formidable, and set far back at
+the very base of the skull, like those of an antelope. The eyes, as
+has been already stated, were small, deep-set and vindictive. The
+sullen black of his coloring added to the portentousness of his swift
+appearance around the clump of pea-green bamboo.
+
+For several minutes the two monsters stood eyeing each other, while
+the rage of an instinctive hatred mounted slowly in their sluggish
+brains. To the King Dinosaur, this stranger was a trespasser on his
+domain, where no other creatures, unless of his own kind, had ever
+before had the presumption to confront him. The suddenness of the
+black apparition, also, exasperated him; and he loathed at once the
+sickly 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 a
+solitary old bull, driven out, for his bad temper, from the
+comfortable herd of his fellows, and burning to find vent for his
+bottled spleen. The herd, in one of its migrations, had just arrived
+in the neighborhood of the great lagoons, and he, in his furious
+restlessness, was unconsciously playing the part of vanguard to it.
+
+He had never, of course, conceived of so terrible an adversary as this
+splotched brown and yellow monster before him. But he was in no mood
+to calculate odds. For all his blind rage, however, he was a crafty
+fighter, always. Seeing that the challenger made no move, he gave
+voice to a huge, squealing grunt, like the noise of a herd of raging
+pigs. Then he dug his armed snout into the turf and hurled a shower of
+sod into the air.
+
+In the eyes of the King Dinosaur this was apparently an intolerable
+insult. With a roar he came lumbering forward, at a slow, rolling run
+which seemed to jar the earth. Grunting again, and moving at thrice
+his speed, the black beast rushed to meet him, head down, like a
+charging bison.
+
+They met under the spreading branches of an immense hoya-tree. But
+they did not meet fairly, head to head, as the Dinosaur intended. Had
+they done so the battle would have been decided then and there, for
+the black beast's horns and unprotected front were no match for the
+impenetrable armor and leveled lances of the King's colossal head. But
+they did not meet fairly. The black stranger was much too crafty for
+that. At the last moment he swerved nimbly aside, wheeled with an
+agility that was marvelous for a creature of his bulk, and thrust at
+the shoulders of the colossus with a fierce, rooting movement like the
+stroke of the wild boar.
+
+But he struck the rim of that impenetrable defense, the spreading ruff
+of horn. And he might as well have struck a mountain-side. That
+enormous bulk, firm-based on the wide-set columns which formed its
+legs, merely staggered an instant, coughed from the jarring of the
+blow, and swung about to present his terrific horns against another
+such attack. The black stranger, meanwhile, as if disappointed at the
+meager result of his tactics, had drawn back out of reach. He stood
+rooting the turf and squealing defiance, in the hope of luring the
+giant into a second charge.
+
+The stupendous duel had two interested spectators. On the top of the
+next tree sat an extraordinary-looking bird, about the size of a
+pheasant, colored blue and rose like a macaw. Its tail was like a
+lizard's, long and fully-vertebrated, with a pair of flat feathers
+standing out opposite each other at right angles from each joint, for
+all the world like an immense acacia-frond done in red. At the tips of
+its wing-elbows it carried clutching, hand-like claws, resembling
+those of the flying reptiles; and its straight, strong beak was armed
+with pointed teeth. It kept opening and shutting its beak excitedly
+and uttering sharp cries, as if calling everyone to come and see the
+fight.
+
+The other spectator was not excited at all. He was a large, ape-like
+man--one would have said, rather, a manlike ape, had it not been for
+the 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 above
+him. He was covered with thick, brown hair, like fur, from head to
+foot, but that on his head was true hair, long and waving. His
+shoulders were massive, his chest of great depth, his arms so long
+that 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 the
+second joint of the fingers, but they were the hands of a man, not
+those of an ape, for the huge thumb was opposed to the fingers instead
+of being set parallel with them like another finger. His head was low
+in the arch of the skull, low and narrow in the forehead, with a small
+facial angle and hardly any bridge to the broad, flat, wide-nostriled
+nose; and the jaws were heavy and thrust forward brutishly. But the
+eyes, under the roof of the heavy, bony brows, held an expression
+profoundly unlike the cold, mechanical stare of the giant Dinosaur or
+the twinkling, vindictive glare of the black stranger. They gazed down
+at the battle with a sort of superiority, considerate, a little
+scornful, in spite of the obvious fact that either of the two, as far
+as mere physical bulk and prowess were concerned, could have
+obliterated him by simply setting foot upon him. In his free hand he
+grasped a branch of acacia set with immense thorns, the needle-like
+points of which he touched contemplatively from time to time, as if
+pondering 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. Both
+monsters were his foes, and the ideal result, in his eyes, would have
+been for the two to destroy each other. But if he had any preference,
+it was for the black mammalian beast, the lizard monster appearing to
+him the more alien, the more incomprehensible and the more impregnable
+to 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 him
+at a distance of ten to twelve yards, seeking an opportunity to get in
+a rush upon his open flank. This wheeling and circling made the cool
+watcher in the tree impatient. Wrenching off a heavy branch, he hurled
+it down with all his force upon the King's face. To the King this
+seemed but another insult from his black antagonist, and his rage
+exploded once more. With a roar he wallowed forward, thinking to pin
+the elusive foe to earth and tread the life out of him.
+
+This gave the black beast his opportunity. Doubling nimbly like a wild
+boar, he dashed in and caught his colossal opponent fairly on the
+side, midway between the shoulder and the haunch. The impact shocked
+the breath from the monster's lungs, with a huge, explosive cough, and
+brought him to a bewildered standstill, though it could not throw him
+from his feet. But the armored hide proved too tough for the black
+beast's horns to penetrate. Perceiving this on the instant, the latter
+reared, and brought down the two awful daggers of his tusks upon the
+monster's ribs. They penetrated, but they failed to rip as far and as
+conclusively as their owner intended. And while he struggled to free
+himself for another attack, the monster recovered from his daze.
+
+Now the stranger had taken count only of those weapons which the King
+Dinosaur bore on his terrible front; and these for the moment were out
+of reach. But he had forgotten the massive and tremendous tail.
+Suddenly it lashed out, nearly half a ton in weight, and with the
+force of a pile-driver. It struck the black beast on the legs, and
+swept them clean from under him.
+
+Before he could pick himself up the Dinosaur had swung about and
+buried all three horns, to the sockets, in his throat and chest. His
+life went out in one ear-splitting squeal of rage and anguish. The red
+blood streaming from horns and ruff, the monster wrenched himself
+free, and then moved irresistibly over his victim, like a rolling
+mountain.
+
+When satisfied that his triumph was complete, the King drew back a
+pace or two, and examined the mangled heap with his cold, unchanging
+stare. Then he sniffed at it contemptuously, and prodded it with his
+nose-horn, and tore it with his extravagant parrot-beak. But, being a
+feeder on herbage only, he had not thought of tasting the red flesh.
+The smell of it was abominable to him; and presently he moved closer
+under the trees to wipe his beak, as a bird might, on a clump of
+coarse grasses.
+
+As he did so, the lowering of his head threw his horny ruff far
+forward, exposing the folds of naked hide on the back of his neck. The
+silent man-creature on the branch above was quick to note the
+opportunity. He was displeased at the monster's triumph. He was also
+interested to see if he had any power to hurt so colossal and well
+protected a foe. Swinging down by his legs and one hand, he thrust the
+thorned branch of acacia deep in under the ruff. The monster, jerking
+his head up sharply at this unexpected assault, drove the long thorns
+well home.
+
+In an instant he was beside himself with rage and pain. Roaring till
+the blue-and-crimson bird on the tree-top flew off in a panic, he
+shook his head desperately, and then almost tried to stand upon it. He
+started to roll over on his back, hoping thus to dislodge the galling
+thing beneath the carapace, but thought better of it at the first
+added pressure. His contortions were so vehement that the man
+discreetly drew himself up to a higher branch, a slow grin widening
+his heavy mouth, as he marked his power to inflict injury on even such
+an adversary as the King Dinosaur. The experiment had been successful
+beyond his utmost anticipations. Like Nature herself, he was
+continually experimenting, but by no means always with satisfactory
+results.
+
+Suddenly the monster made off, with head held as low as possible, for
+the edge of the lagoon. Ploughing his way in with a huge splashing, he
+disappeared beneath the water. A minute later he returned to the
+surface and swam rapidly towards the jungle on the opposite shore,
+probably intending to find some projecting stump of a dead limb on
+which he could scratch the torment from under his ruff. At the edge of
+the jungle he was joined by another monster, like himself, but
+smaller--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 a
+heavy fragment of branch, which he held awkwardly, as if not
+over-familiar with the idea of an artificial weapon. He seemed to be
+groping his way towards some use of it, either as a club or as a
+stabbing instrument. During the fight, while he was experimenting with
+the thorn branch, he had evidently had this weapon lodged in some safe
+crotch. And now he kept handling it with a curious interest.
+
+Standing erect, he might easily have been mistaken for a slightly
+built and shapelier variety of the gorilla but for the true man-hands
+and the steady, contemplative, foreseeing look in the eyes. He came
+and examined the mangled bulk of the Dinoceras, scrutinized the horns
+and tusks minutely, and strove with all his force to wrench one of the
+latter from its socket, as if hoping to make some use of it. Then,
+fastidiously selecting a shred of the victim's torn flesh, he sniffed
+and nibbled at it, and then threw it aside. He could eat and enjoy
+flesh-food at a pinch. But just now fruit was abundant; and fruit,
+with eggs and honey, formed the diet he preferred. As he stood
+pondering the lifeless mass before him, a shrill call came to his
+ears, and, turning sharply, he saw his mate, with her baby in the
+crook of her hairy arm, standing at the foot of a tree, and signaling
+him to come to her. As soon as she saw that he understood, and was
+coming, she swung herself lightly up into the branches. He ran to the
+tree, climbed after her, and followed her to the very top, where she
+awaited him. The tree was taller than any of its neighbors, and
+commanded a clear view of the meadow-lands that lay a half mile back
+from the lagoon. His mate was pointing eagerly to these meadows. He
+saw that they were dotted and spotted with groups of great black,
+horned and tusked beasts like the one whose destruction he had just
+witnessed. These were the migrant herds of the Dinoceras, just arrived
+at their new pasturage. The man eyed them with discontent. He had seen
+a specimen of their temper; and he congratulated himself that he and
+his mate knew how to live in trees.
+
+The man-creature himself was a new-comer to the shores of the great
+lagoon. The place suited him admirably by reason of the abundance of
+its fruits. Along the banks of the lagoon were innumerable little
+groves of plantain, the rich sustaining fruit of which was of all
+foods his favorite. And he had found no trace whatever of his most
+dangerous enemies, the gigantic and implacable black lion of the
+caves, the red bear and the saber-tooth.
+
+Such an irresistible giant as the King of the Triple Horn he might
+wonder 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 a
+refuge 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 and
+twigs. A similar but lighter platform overhead made him a roof that
+was anything but waterproof, and a few bushy branches served for
+walls. Such as it was, it was at least the beginning of a home. He
+loved it; and in defense of the little hairy brown mate and downy
+brown baby who shared it with him he would have fought both Dinosaur
+and Dinoceras with his naked hands.
+
+For some days nothing more was seen of the two Dinosaurs, the King
+being probably occupied, in the depths of the jungle, with the nursing
+of his wrath and his hurts. The herds of the Dinoceras, meanwhile,
+kept to their meadows, having better drinking-water in a slow stream
+which traversed the pastures than in the brackish tide of the lagoon.
+
+Then came a morning when the brown mother, babe on arm, was gathering
+plantains not far from the waterside, while the man chanced to be away
+exploring the limits of his new domain. The woman looked up suddenly;
+and there, almost upon her, was the giant horror of the Dinosaur, his
+cold, expressionless eyes gaping at her immovably from their goggling
+sockets. She turned to flee; and there was the monster's mate, not
+quite so huge, but equally appalling. Behind her was an impenetrable
+wall of thorn-acacia. There was only one refuge--a tree, all too
+small, but lofty enough to take her beyond the reach of those
+horrifying horned and immobile masks. Up the little tree she went,
+nimbly as a monkey, and crouched shivering in a crotch. The slender
+trunk swayed beneath her weight. She clutched the brown baby to her
+heart, and sent shriek after shriek through the glades.
+
+A mile away the man heard it. He gave one deep-chested shout in
+answer, and then came running in silence, saving his breath.
+
+But it was a mile he had to come. The female Dinosaur, the more
+instantly malignant of the two, hurled herself upon the trunk of the
+tree. It swayed horribly, but did not yield at once. Thereupon the two
+began to root beneath it with their horns, having often used this
+method to obtain fruits which were above their reach. The tree leaned
+far over. The giant straddled it as a moose straddles a poplar
+sapling, and bore it down irresistibly. Its top touched earth.
+
+The brown mother sprang forth with a tremendous leap, clearing the
+horns with a twist which nearly broke her back. She thought herself
+free. And then a gigantic tail struck her and felled her senseless. A
+second more, and the female Dinosaur's great foot crushed her and the
+wailing babe out of existence together.
+
+The swift end of the tragedy the man had seen as he came racing down a
+stretch of open glade. He did not need to look at the awful thing
+beneath the monster's foot to know that all was over. Beyond one
+hoarse groan he uttered not a sound. But blindly--for he had never yet
+practised such an art--he hurled his ragged club at the nearest
+monster. It rebounded like a baby's rattle from the vast horn-armored
+head. But a lucky chance had guided it. One of its sharp, splintered
+knots struck fairly in the Dinosaur's eye, and smashed it in the
+socket. She roared with agony; and the two, side by side, came lunging
+towards him.
+
+The man ran back slowly. His despairing grief had changed suddenly
+into a cold hate and a resolve for vengeance. It was so easy for him
+to outstrip these lumbering monsters who were spouting their fetid,
+musky breath close upon his heels. He stumbled carefully at every
+other step. He let them feel that at the next stride they would
+transfix him. He led them on, the earth shaking beneath their tread,
+till another fifty feet would have brought them out upon the skirts of
+the meadow. But at this point, wearied by such an unwonted burst of
+effort, the King halted sulkily. He had not had an eye put out. He
+wanted to give it up. But his mate came right on, thirsting for her
+revenge.
+
+The man was not content with her pursuit alone. Spurting ahead, he
+gathered up two handfuls of sand and gravel, whirled about, and drove
+them with all his strength into the King's cold eyes. It worked.
+Smarting and half blinded, the monster forgot his weariness, and came
+charging along furiously in the trail of his mate.
+
+They were stupid, these Lizard Kings, with more brains in their pelvic
+arches than in their giant skulls. Because the puny man-creature went
+stumbling almost within reach of their beaks, they imagined they were
+going to catch him. That he would go dodging around thickets which
+they crashed over blindly, and would then return to present himself
+again deliberately before them, did not strike them as at all
+suspicious. Their dull but relentless hate once thoroughly aroused, as
+long as he was in sight and they could move the mighty columns of
+their 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 out
+into the open, and still they followed, raging silently.
+
+The black herds of the Dinoceras stopped feeding all at once, and
+raised their vicious heads and stared.
+
+There were countless cows in the herd, horned like the bulls, but
+smaller, and without the rending tusks. The cows, at this season, all
+had young. After one long, comprehending stare at the two gigantic
+mottled 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 man
+observed that the motion of the herd was an ordered one. The black
+beasts were deftly sorting themselves out to meet the danger. The
+bulls came thrusting themselves to the front--a terrific array which
+might have struck panic to the hearts of even the colossal Dinosaurs
+had they not been too stupid with rage for any new impression to
+pierce their brains. The cows, meanwhile, pushing their calves into a
+huddled mass behind them, formed themselves into a second array, a
+reserve of less mass and strength than the ranks of the bulls, but of
+an invincible mother-fury.
+
+The man, with a wise fearlessness, ran on straight through the
+gathering line of bulls, the nearest of whom thrust at him carelessly
+and then paid him no more heed. Behind their ranks, hidden now from
+the sight of his pursuers, he swerved, avoiding the line of cows, ran
+sharply to the right, and came back around the end of the line to see
+what was going to happen. For all his grief, his heart was thumping
+almost to suffocation as his titanic vengeance moved to its end.
+
+When the two raging Dinosaurs lost sight of their prey they stopped
+short, stupidly bewildered. Then they noticed the array of black
+beasts charging upon them. This, in their mad mood, afforded a new
+object to their rage. They plunged wallowing forward to meet the new
+foe. And at that moment the man, appearing round the wing of the black
+ranks, halted abruptly, and laughed.
+
+It was a strange, disconcerting sound, that laughter, and the nearest
+Dinoceras, disturbed by it, edged away and crowded against his
+neighbor'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 bulks
+went straight through the ranks of the black bulls, ripping them with
+beak and horn from shoulder to rump, treading them down like corn, and
+trampling them under foot as they rolled on. The bulls on either side
+charged on their flanks, rearing, grunting, squealing insanely and
+ripping with the massive daggers of their tusks. But as this terrific
+assault came from both sides at once, the two monsters were in reality
+supported by it, so that they were not swept off their feet. Almost
+without a check, as it seemed, they ploughed straight on, lashing with
+their mighty tails, and leaving a trail of disabled victims behind
+them, 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 horns
+and armored fronts, bearing them down, smothering, engulfing them in
+an avalanche of screaming and monstrous bulks. The bulls, meanwhile,
+were rending, tearing, stabbing, on flank and rear. The two Dinosaurs
+disappeared from view. The dreadful mountain of writhing, gigantic
+shapes heaved convulsively for some minutes. Then the great columns
+that were the Dinosaurs' legs seemed to crumble beneath the weight.
+The awful, battling heap sagged, fell apart, and let in the glare of
+the sunlight upon what had been the two colossal monarchs of the early
+world. The dreadful, unrecognizable things still moved, still heaved
+and twisted ponderously among the bodies of their slain, but it was
+mere aimless paroxysm, the blind life struggling to resist its final
+expulsion and dissipation. The wounded Dinoceras drew away, to die or
+recover as curious Nature might decree. The surviving cows returned to
+assure themselves that their young had come to no hurt. And the great
+black bulls who had escaped serious injury in the struggle stood about
+in a ring, thrusting and ripping at the unresponsive mountains of
+flesh. As they satisfied themselves, one after another, that the
+victory was complete, and that there was nothing more to battle
+against, they fell to devouring their prey. Ordinarily feeders on
+herbage and roots, they were like pigs and rats and men, more or less
+without prejudice in their diet, and they seemed to think that
+dinosaur went very well with grass.
+
+At a distance of not more than fifty paces from these destroying
+hosts, the man-creature stood carelessly, and stared and considered.
+He had no fear of them. He knew he could avoid them with ease. So
+insignificant that in their excitement they hardly noticed him, so
+small that in bulk he was no greater than the least of their calves,
+he nevertheless despised the gigantic beasts and felt himself their
+lord. He had played with the two monarchs of all the early world, led
+them into his trap, and taken such dreadful vengeance upon them that
+his grief was almost assuaged by the fullness of it. The black herds
+of 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 inform
+him at once if any should take it into their heads to pursue him, and
+stalked away with deliberation towards the wooded ground. But he
+avoided his tree. He would never more go near that empty home. He
+would return to the regions beyond the head of the lagoon, where he
+would find scattered members of his kindred. He would find another
+mate; and in a dim, groping way he harbored a desire for new
+offspring, for sons, in particular, who should be inquiring and full
+of resource, like himself. At the edge of the wood he turned, and gave
+one more long, musing look at the invincible black herds whom he had
+used. The idea of sons came back upon him insistently. A faint sense
+of the immeasurable vastness of what was to be done swept over his
+soul. But he was not daunted. He would at least do something. And he
+would teach his children, till they should learn, perhaps, by taking
+thought, even to overcome the ferocity of the saber-tooth and foil the
+malice of the great red bear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FINDING OF FIRE
+
+
+I
+
+The people of the Little Hills were in extremity. Trouble after
+trouble had come upon them, blow after blow had stricken them, till
+now there were but three score fighting-men, with perhaps twice that
+number of women able to bear children, left to the tribe. It looked as
+if but one more stroke such as that which had just befallen them must
+wipe them out of existence. And that, had ruthless Nature suffered it,
+would have been a damage she might have taken some thousands of years
+to repair. For the People of the Little Hills had climbed higher from
+the pregnant ooze than any other of the man or half-man tribes at that
+time struggling into being on the youthful Earth.
+
+First and not least formidable to the tribe had been an incursion from
+the east of beings who were plainly men, in a way, but still more
+plainly beasts. Had the tribe of the Little Hills but known it, these
+Ape-men were much like their own ancestors except for the blackness of
+their skins beneath the coarse fur, the narrow angle of their skulls
+and the heavy forward thrust of their lower jaws.
+
+Soon afterwards, appearing from no man could say just where, came
+a scattered incursion of mammoth cave-bears, saber-toothed tigers and
+a few gigantic cave-lions. These ravenous monsters not only
+slaughtered wholesale the game on which the Hillmen most depended,
+but strove--each for himself, fortunately--to seize the caves. As
+they raged against each other no less desperately than against
+their human adversaries, the issue of the war was never in doubt.
+The Hillmen stood together solidly, fought with all their cunning
+of pitfall and ambuscade, and overwhelmed the mightiest by sheer
+weight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When the
+last of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek less
+difficult encounters, he left mourning and lamentation in the caves.
+
+This war had been a matter of some seasons. Then had followed a summer
+of peace and good hunting, which had given wounds time to heal. But
+with winter had swept down another dreadful invasion again from the
+unfriendly east--wolves, wolves of gigantic stature, and hunting in
+such huge packs that many outlying sections of the tribe were cut off
+and devoured before the Hillmen could combine to withstand them.
+Fortunately, the different packs had no combined action, so after the
+first shock the sagacious warrior who ruled the men of the Little
+Hills was able to get his diminished followers together, along with
+most of their stored supplies, and mass them in the amphitheater of
+the 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 off
+ravaging to the south-westward. The People of the Little Hills were
+free once more to come out into the sun. But there was no more game to
+hunt, neither in the forest, nor on the upland slopes, nor in the
+reeking marshes by the estuary. The tribe was driven to fumbling in
+the pools at low tide for scallops and clams and mussels, a diet which
+their souls despised and their bodies resented.
+
+The fact that the invasion of the wolves had forced the tribe to
+concentrate, however, presently proved to have been a painfully
+disguised blessing. Had they remained as before, scattered all over
+their domain for the convenience of the chase, their next and hardest
+trial would surely have annihilated them.
+
+It was once more out of the east that it came upon them, by the trail
+of the vanished Ape-men and the ravaging wolves. About sunrise of a
+summer's day a woman of the tribe was grubbing for roots with a
+pointed stick by the banks of a brook when she was pounced upon by a
+pair of squat, yellow-brown, filthy men with enormous shoulders, short
+bow-legs and flat faces with gaping, upturned nostrils. Young and
+vigorous, she fought like a tigress till stunned by a blow on the
+head, which was not before both her assailants were streaming with
+blood from the jabs of her sharp digging-stick. Her cries had aroused
+the tribe, however, and her captors, appreciating in her a shapeliness
+and fairness beyond anything they had ever seen in their own females,
+hastened to make sure of their prize by dragging her off into the
+woods. Three of the Hillmen, raging in pursuit, were intercepted by a
+horde of the squat strangers suddenly leaping from the thickets,
+surrounded, pulled down after a heaving convulsion of struggle, torn
+to pieces and trodden into the earth.
+
+The Chief of the tribe, from his vantage at the top of the slope which
+led up to the little amphitheater of caves wherein he had gathered his
+people, saw and understood. The perils of the past two years had made
+him 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 the
+death. Angrily beating back the hotheads who would have rushed down to
+avenge their kin and inevitably to share their fate, his shouts,
+bellowed sonorously from his deep and hairy chest, called up the whole
+tribe to the defense of the bottle-neck pass which led into the
+amphitheater. 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 of
+the pass, while others raced about collecting stones to hand up to
+them. The younger women and grown girls, armed, like the men, with
+stone-headed clubs and flint-tipped spears, took their places in the
+hinder ranks at the mouth of the pass.
+
+The Bow-legs, their yellow skin showing through the clotted tufts of
+coarse, clay-colored hair which unevenly clothed their bodies, came
+plunging irregularly through the brook and gathered in confused masses
+along the foot of the slope, jabbering shrilly to each other and
+making insolent gestures toward the silent company at the top. The
+hair of their heads was stringy, coarse and scant, and of an inky
+blackness, in contrast to the abundant locks of the Hillmen, which
+were 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 opponents
+by a foot or fifteen inches. With less breadth of shoulder and
+heaviness of trunk, they had great depth of chest, great muscular
+development in arm and leg, and a leanness of flank that gave them a
+look 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 children
+and younger women. They had ample foreheads under the wild thatch of
+their hair, and high, well-bridged noses, and fierce, steady eyes of
+green, blue or brown-gray. Outnumbered nearly ten to one, and shrewd
+enough to see at a glance what ferocious power lurked in those
+misshapen frames at the foot of the slope, they stood staring down
+upon 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. They
+seemed to have no chief, no plan of attack, no discipline of any sort.
+Some of them even squatted down on the turf and scratched themselves
+like monkeys, glaring malignantly but stupidly at the little array of
+their opponents, and snorting through their hideous upturned nostrils,
+which were little more than wide, red pits in their faces. Then some
+of those who were squatting on the ground began to play with a
+dreadful 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 of
+them would have rushed to accept the ghastly challenge. But the
+Chief held them back sternly. Then he himself, half a head taller
+than all but one or two of his followers, with magnificent chest and
+shoulders, and a dark, lionlike mane thick-streaked with grey,
+strode out three or four paces to the front and stood leaning on his
+huge, porphyry-headed club while he glared down contemptuously over
+the gesticulating horde.
+
+The Bow-legs stilled their jabbering for a moment to stare with
+interest at this imposing figure. Then one of those who were seated on
+the ground seized the ghastly ball that they were playing with,
+whirled it by the hair and hurled it two-thirds of the way up the
+slope. As it fell and rebounded, two young women sprang from the
+ranks, their thick locks streaming like a cloud behind them, and
+dashed down the hill to meet it. The foremost caught it up, clutched
+it to her naked breast, and screamed a curse upon the gaping
+murderers. Then the two fled back, and were lost in the ranks of the
+Hillmen.
+
+The sight of the two women, with their bright skins, their strong,
+straight limbs and their rich, floating hair, appeared to give the
+Bow-legs just the spur to concerted action that they were needing.
+They rightly judged there were more of those desirable beings in the
+crowd behind that tall, contemptuous chief. Those on the ground
+scrambled eagerly to their feet, and with shrill, bestial yells the
+whole horde charged up the slope.
+
+As the leaping and hideous forms approached the top the pent-up fury
+of the Hillmen, in spite of all the Chief could do, broke loose, and
+with a roar the foremost ranks bounded forth to meet them. At the
+first crash of contact the enemy were crushed back, the stone-headed
+clubs and flint-tipped spears working havoc in the reeking masses.
+But, as the Chief had foreseen it would be, that forward rush was a
+mistake, exposing the flanks; and sheer weight of numbers presently
+forced the Hillmen back till their front was once more level with the
+jaws of the pass. Here, however, with their flanks protected, they
+were solid as a wall of granite.
+
+Upon this narrow wall the yelling wave of the attack surged and
+recoiled, and surged again, and made no impression. The clumsy weapons
+of the enemy were no match for the pounding swing of the stone clubs,
+the long, lightning thrust of the flint-headed spears. But the
+Bow-legs, their little pig-eyes red with lust for their prey, fought
+with a sort of frenzy, diving in headlong and clutching at the legs of
+the Hillmen with their ape-like, sinewy arms, dragging them down and
+tearing then with crooked, clawlike fingers.
+
+Many of the Hillmen, and some women died in this way. But no woman was
+dragged away alive; for if this fate threatened her, and rescue was
+impossible, she was instantly speared from her own ranks to save her
+from a fate which would have dishonored the tribe. And the women
+indeed, in this battle were no less formidable than the men
+themselves, for they fought with the swift venom of the she-wolf, the
+cunning fury of the mad heifer, intuitive and implacable. Their
+instincts of motherhood, the safeguard of the future, made them loathe
+with a blind, unspeakable hate these filthy and bestial males who
+threatened to father their children.
+
+The center of the Hillmen's front was securely held by the great
+Chief, whose massive club, wielded with the art acquired in many
+battles, kept a space cleared before him across which no foe could
+pass alive. As his followers went down on either side, others from the
+ranks behind stepped eagerly into the gaps. At the extreme left, where
+the walls of the pass, lower and less abrupt than on the right,
+invited an attack as fierce as that upon the center, the defense was
+led by a warrior named Grom, who seemed no less redoubtable than the
+Chief himself. He, too, like the Chief, fought in grim silence, saving
+his breath, except for an occasional incisive cry of command or
+encouragement to those about him. And his club also, like that of the
+Chief, kept a zone of death before him.
+
+But his club was much smaller than that shattering mace of porphyry
+wielded by the Chief--smaller and lighter, considerably longer in the
+handle and quite of another pattern. The head was of flint, a sort of
+ragged cone set sideways into the handle, so that one end of the head
+was like a sledge-hammer and the other like a pick. Grasping this neat
+weapon nearly half-way up the handle, he made miraculous play with it,
+now smashing with the hammer front, now tapping with the pick, now
+suddenly swinging it out to the full length of the long handle to
+reach and drop an elusive adversary. The weapon was both club and
+spear to him; and to guard against any possibility of its being
+wrenched from him in the melee, he held it secured to his wrist by a
+thong of hide.
+
+This warrior, though his renown in the tribe, both as hunter and
+fighter, was second only to that of the great Chief himself, had never
+aroused the Chief's jealousy. This for several reasons. He had always
+loyally supported the Chief's authority, instead of scheming to
+undermine it, and his influence had always made for tribal discipline.
+He was not so tall as the Chief, by perhaps half a handbreadth, and
+for all his huge muscles of arm and breast he was altogether of a
+slimmer build; wherefore the Chief, while vastly respecting his
+counsels, was not suspicious of his rivalry. Moreover, up to the time
+of the invasion of the wolves, he had always dwelt in a remote cave,
+quite on the outskirts of the tribe, constituting himself a frontier
+defense, as it were, and avoiding all the tribal gossip. Slightly
+younger than the Chief, and with few gray streaks as yet in the dense,
+ruddy-brown masses of his hair and beard, his face nevertheless looked
+older, by reason of its deeper lines and the considering gravity of
+the eyes.
+
+In his remote cave Grom had had the companionship of his family,
+consisting of his old mother, his two wives, and his four children--three
+sons and a daughter. It was while he was absent on a hunting expedition
+that the wolves had come. They had surprised the little, isolated
+family, and after a terrible struggle wiped it out.
+
+Conspicuous among the fighters at Grom's back was a young girl, tall,
+with a fair skin and masses of long, very dark hair. Armed with a
+spear, she fought savagely, but at the same time managed to keep an
+eye on all the warrior's movements.
+
+Suddenly from the rocks above came a shrill cry. To Grom's ears it
+seemed like the voice of one of his dead children. At the end of a
+long stroke, when his arms and the club were outstretched full length,
+he glanced upwards in spite of himself. Instantly the club was
+clutched by furious hands. He was pulled forward. At the same time one
+of the enemy, ducking under his arms, plunged between his legs. And he
+came down upon his face.
+
+With a piercing scream, the tall girl bounded forth and stood across
+him; and her spear stabbed his nearest assailant straight through the
+flat and grinning face. So lightning swift was the rage of her attack
+that for one vital moment it held the whole horde at bay. Then the
+Hillmen swarmed forward irresistibly, battered down the foremost of
+the foe, and dragged the fallen warrior back behind the lines to
+recover. In half a minute he was once more at the front, fighting with
+renewed fury, his head and back and shoulders covered with blood. And
+close behind him stood the girl, breathless, clutching at her heart
+and staring at him with wide eyes, unaware that the blood which
+covered him was not his but her own.
+
+Although to the invaders, their every charge broken and hurled back
+with terrific slaughter, it must have seemed that their tall opponents
+had all the best of the battle, to the wise old men and women up among
+the rocks it was clear that their warriors were being rapidly worn
+away as a bank is eaten by the waves. But now from a high ledge on the
+right, where the wall of the pass was a sheer perpendicular, came two
+shrill whistles. It was a signal which the Chief, now bleeding from
+many wounds, had been waiting for. He roared a command, and his ranks,
+after one surge forward to recover their wounded, gave back sullenly
+till their front was more than half-way down the pass. With yells of
+triumph the Bow-legs followed, trampling their dead and wounded, till
+the 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 their
+heads; but from the right, for a few moments, only a rain of pebbles
+and dust, which blinded them and choked their hideous, upturned
+nostrils.
+
+Above that dust a band of graybeards heaved upon a lever. They grunted
+and strained, with eyes staring and the sweat jumping forth on their
+foreheads. Then something gave. A great slice of the rock-face began
+to slip. Some of the toilers scrambled back to safety, their long,
+white hair flying behind them. But others, unable to recover
+themselves in time, fell sprawling forward. Then with a thunderous
+growl a huge slab of rock and earth and debris crashed down upon the
+packed hordes in the neck of the pass. A long shout of triumph went up
+from the Hillmen. The outer ranks of the invaders stood for a second
+or two petrified with horror. Then they turned and fled, screaming,
+down the slope. On their heels the Hillmen pursued, slaughtering, till
+the brook-bed was choked with the dead. Of that filthy horde hardly a
+score escaped, and these fled back, gibbering, to meet the migrant
+hosts of their kin who were following on their trail. The story they
+told was of a tribe of tall, fair-skinned demons, invincible in war,
+who tore up mountains to hurl them on their adversaries. And
+thereafter, for a time, the Bow-legged hosts changed the path of their
+migration, sweeping far to the southward to avoid the land of the
+Little Hills.
+
+
+II
+
+A white, high-sailing moon streamed down into the amphitheater, where
+the scarred remnant of the tribe of the Little Hills, squatting before
+their cave-mouths, took counsel. Their dead had all been reverently
+buried, under heaps of stones, on the bare and wind-swept shoulder of
+the downs. Outside the pass the giant jackals, cave-hyenas and other
+scavengers of the night, howled and scuffled over the carcasses of the
+slain invaders.
+
+Endless and tumultuous was the talk, the white-haired, bent old men
+and the women who had borne children being listened to as attentively
+as the warriors. The Chief, sitting on a rock which raised him above
+the rest, spoke only a word now and then, but gave ear to all,
+glancing from speaker to speaker with narrowed eyes, weighing all
+suggestions. On the outskirts of the circle stood Grom, leaning on his
+club, staring at the moon, apparently lost in dreams.
+
+Suddenly the Chief uttered a sharp word, and the tribe fell silent. He
+rose, yet stiff from his wounds, and, towering masterfully over the
+council announced his decision.
+
+"I have heard much foolishness," said he, "but also some wisdom. And
+the greatest wisdom has come from the lips of my father yonder, Alp
+the old." He pointed to a decrepit figure, whose bowed head was hidden
+under a mass of white hair. "My father's eyes are blind with age," he
+continued, "but behind their darkness they see many things that we
+cannot see. They have seen that all these disasters which have lately
+come upon us have come out of the east. They see that there must be a
+reason. They see that other terrible dangers must also be coming out
+of 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, I
+say we will leave this place, this home of our fathers, and we will go
+toward the setting sun, and find a new home far from our enemies till
+we 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 and
+afraid at the idea of leaving their familiar dwellings. But Grom, who
+had 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 only
+because he is our mightiest in war, but because he is also our wisest
+in counsel. When do we go?"
+
+The Chief thought for a moment. For the murmurs of the dissidents he
+cared nothing, having made up his mind. But he was glad of Grom's
+support.
+
+"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 not
+where we go, we must gather much food to carry with us. When the moon
+is twice again full, we leave these caves and the Land of the Little
+Hills."
+
+"Then," said Grom, "if Bawr will allow me, I will go and find a place
+for us, and come again quickly and lead the tribe thither by the
+shortest way."
+
+"It is good!" said Bawr, quick to see what dangerous wanderings might
+be spared to the tribe by this plan. "When will you go?"
+
+"In to-morrow's morning-red," answered Grom.
+
+At Grom's words, the young girl, A-ya, who had been watching the
+warrior where he stood aloof, sprang to her feet in sharp agitation
+and clutched her dark hair to her bosom in two great handfuls. At this
+a 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.
+
+"Grom is a traitor!" he cried. "He deserts us in our need. Let him not
+go, Chief!"
+
+A growl of protest went up from his hearers. The girl faced round upon
+him with blazing eyes. Grom gave him an indifferent glance, and turned
+away, half smiling. The Chief struck the rock with his club, and said
+coldly:
+
+"Mawg is young, and his words are foolish. Grom is a true man. He
+shall do as he will."
+
+The youth's heavy features worked angrily for a moment as he sought
+words for a further attack. Then his face smoothed into a grin as he
+remembered that from so perilous a venture it was most unlikely his
+rival would ever return. He gave a crafty side-glance at the girl, and
+sat down again, while she turned her back upon him. At a sign from the
+Chief the council broke up, and all slipped off, chattering, into
+their caves.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the first pink light crept up the sky, Grom set forth on his
+mysterious venture. It was just such a venture as his sanguine and
+inquiring spirit, avid of the unknown, had always dreamed of. But
+never before had he had such an object before him as seemed to justify
+the long risk. There was all a boy's eagerness in his deep eyes, under
+their shaggy brows, as he slipped noiselessly out of the bottle-neck,
+picked his way lightly over the well-gnawed bones of the slain
+invaders, turned his back on the sunrise, and took his course up the
+edge of the stream. The weapons he carried were his war-club, two
+light, flint-headed hunting-spears and a flint knife hung from his
+wolf-skin girdle.
+
+All that day, till mid-afternoon, he journeyed swiftly, straight
+ahead, taking no precaution save to keep always a vigilant watch and
+to 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 felt
+at home. He traveled very swiftly, at a long, noiseless lope; and when
+he 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 his
+pursuer. But when he found no one, he concluded that it was merely one
+of the ghosts the tribe so feared, but whom he himself rather held in
+contempt as futile.
+
+Long before noon he had forsaken the brook, because its course had
+ceased to lead him westward. In the afternoon he reached a river which
+marked the limit of his former explorations. It was a wide, swift
+water, but too shallow and turbulent for swimming, and he forded it
+with some difficulty. Once across, he went with more caution,
+oppressed with a sense of strangeness, although the landscape as yet
+was in no way greatly changed.
+
+As the sun got low, Grom cast about for a safe tree in whose top to
+pass the perilous hours of dark. As he stared around him a cry of fear
+came from the bunch of woods which he had just quitted. The voice was
+a woman's. He ran back. The next second the trees parted, and a girl
+came rushing towards him, her dark hair streaming behind her. Close
+after her came three huge cave-wolves.
+
+Grom shouted, and hurled a spear. It struck one of the wolves full in
+the chest, splitting the heart. At this the other two halted
+irresolutely. But as Grom's tall figure came bounding down upon them,
+their indecision vanished. They wheeled about, and ran off into the
+thickets. The girl came forward timorously, and knelt at Grom's feet.
+
+At first with wonder and some annoyance, the warrior looked down upon
+her. Then recognition came into his eyes. He saw the tip of a deep
+wound on her shoulder, and knew that it ran, livid and angry, half-way
+down her bosom. It was the young girl A-ya. His eyes softened, for he
+had heard how it was she who had saved him in the battle, fighting so
+furiously over him when he was down--she in whose blood he had found
+his 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 her
+and wondered. He was sorely afraid of being hampered in his great
+enterprise, but he asked her gently why she had followed him.
+
+"I was afraid for you," she answered, without looking up. "You go to
+such great dangers. I could not stay with the tribe, and wait."
+
+"You think I need help?" he asked, with a self-confident look in his
+eyes.
+
+"You did need me in the battle!" answered the girl proudly.
+
+"True!" said Grom. "But for you I should now have been sleeping under
+the stones and the wind."
+
+He looked at her with a feeling that surprised himself, a kind of
+thrilling tenderness, such as he had never felt toward a woman before.
+His wives had been good wives and dutiful, and he had been content
+with them. But it occurred to him that neither of them would ever have
+thought to come with him on this expedition.
+
+"I could not stay without you," said the girl again. "Also, I was
+afraid of Mawg," she added cunningly.
+
+A wave of jealous wrath surged through Grom'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 moment
+vehemently 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 Grom, his indifference quite
+forgotten. "But come, we must find a place for the night."
+
+And hand in hand they ran to a great tree which Grom had already
+marked for his retreat. As they climbed to the upper branches, dusk
+fell quickly about them, some great beast roared thunderously from the
+depths of the forest, and from a near-by jungle came sudden crashings
+of the undergrowth.
+
+
+III
+
+For three weeks Grom and the girl pressed on eagerly, swinging north
+to avoid a vast lake, whose rank and marshy shores were trodden by
+monsters such as they had never before set eyes upon. Of nights, no
+matter how high or how well hidden their tree-top refuge might be,
+they found it necessary to keep vigil turn and turn about, so numerous
+and so enterprising were the enemies who sought to investigate the
+strange human trail.
+
+Had Grom been alone he would soon have been worn out for want of
+sleep. The girl, however, her eyes ever bright with happiness, seemed
+utterly untiring, and Grom watched her with daily growing delight. He
+had never heard or dreamed of a man regarding a woman as he regarded
+the lithe, fierce creature who ran beside him. But he had never been
+afraid of new things or new ideas, and he was not ashamed of this
+sweet ache of tenderness at his astonished heart.
+
+Beyond the lake and the morasses they came to a strange, broken
+land, a land of fertile valleys, deep-verdured and teeming with life,
+but sown with abrupt, conelike, naked hills. Along the near horizon
+ran a chain of those sharp, low summits, irregularly jagged against
+the pale blue. From several of the summits rose streamers of murky
+vapor; and one of these, darker and more abundant than the others,
+spread abroad at the top on the windless air till it took the shape
+of a colossal pine-tree. To the girl the sight was portentous. It
+filled her with apprehension, and she would have liked to avoid
+this unfamiliar-looking region. But, seeing that Grom was filled
+with interest at the novel phenomena before them, she thrust aside
+her fears and assumed a like eagerness on the subject.
+
+In the heat of the day they came to a pair of trees, lofty and
+spreading, which stood a little apart from the rest of the forest
+growth, in a stretch of open meadows. An ice-cold rivulet babbled past
+their roots. It was time for the noonday rest, and these trees seemed
+to offer a safe retreat. The girl drank, splashed herself with the
+delicious coolness, flung back her dripping hair, then swung herself
+up lightly into the branches. Grom 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 for
+the moment at fault--from behind a near-by thicket rushed a gigantic,
+shaggy grey form, and hurled itself at him ponderously but with awful
+swiftness, like a grey bowlder dashing down a hillside. The girl, from
+her perch in the lower branches, gave a shriek of warning. Grom
+bounded to his feet, and darted for the tree. But the monster--a gray
+bear, of a bulk beyond that of the hugest grizzly--was almost upon
+him, and would have seized him before he could climb out of reach. A
+spear hurtled close past his head. It grazed, and laid open, the side
+of the beast's snout, and sank deep into its shoulder. With a roar,
+the beast halted to claw it forth. And in that moment Grom swung
+himself up into the branches, dropping both his spears as he did so.
+
+The bear, mad with pain and fury, reared himself against the trunk and
+began to draw himself up. Grom struck at him with his club, but from
+his difficult position could put no force into his blow and the bear
+hardly seemed to notice it.
+
+"We must lead him up, then drop down and run," said Grom. And the two
+mounted nimbly.
+
+The bear followed, till the branches began to yield too perilously
+beneath his weight. Then Grom and the girl slipped over into the next
+tree. As they did so another bear even huger than the first, and
+apparently her mate, appeared below, glanced up with shrewd,
+implacable eyes, and proceeded to climb the second tree.
+
+Grom looked at the girl with piercing anxiety such as he had never
+known before.
+
+"Can you run, very fast?" he demanded.
+
+The girl laughed, her terror almost forgotten in her pride at having
+once more saved him.
+
+"I ran from the wolves," she reminded him.
+
+"Then we must run, perhaps very far," answered Grom, reassured, "till
+we find some place of steep rocks where we can fight with some hope.
+For these beasts are obstinate, and will never give up from pursuing
+us. And, unlike the red cave-bears they seem to know how to climb
+trees."
+
+When both bears were high in the two trees, Grom and the girl slipped
+down by the bending tips of the branches, almost as swiftly as
+falling. They snatched up Grom's two spears and A-ya's broken one, and
+ran, down along the brook toward the line of the smoking hills. The
+bears, descending more slowly, came after them at a terrific,
+ponderous gallop.
+
+The girl ran, as she had said, well--so well that Grom who was famous
+in the tribe for his running, did not have greatly to slacken his pace
+in her favor. Finding that, at first, they gained slightly on their
+pursuers, Grom bade her slow down a little till they did no more than
+hold their own. Fearing lest she should exhaust herself, he ran always
+a pace behind her, admonishing her how to save her strength and her
+breath, and ever warily casting his eyes about for a possible refuge.
+Warily, too, he chose the smoothest ways, sparing her feet. For he
+knew that if she gave out and fell he would stop and fight his last
+fight over her body.
+
+For an hour or more the girl ran easily. Then she began to show signs
+of distress. Her face grew ashen, the breath came harshly from her
+open lips, and once or twice she stumbled. With the first pang of fear
+at his heart, Grom closed up beside her, made her lean heavily on his
+rigid forearm, and cheered her with words of praise. He pointed to a
+spur of broken mountains now close ahead, with a narrow valley
+cleaving them midway.
+
+"There will be ledges," he said, "where we can defend ourselves, and
+where you can rest."
+
+Skirting a bit of jungle, so dense with massive cane and thorned
+creepers that nothing could penetrate it, they came suddenly upon a
+space of barren gray plain, and saw, straight ahead, the opening of
+the valley. It was not more than a couple of furlongs distant. And its
+walls, partly clothed with shrubbery, partly naked, were so seamed and
+cleft and creviced that they appeared to promise many convenient
+retreats. But across the mouth of the valley extended an appalling
+barrier. From an irregular fissure in the parched earth, running on a
+slant from one wall to the other, came tongues of red flame, waving
+upwards to a height of several feet, sinking back, rising again, and
+bowing as if in some enchanted dance.
+
+Grom's heart stood still in awe and amazement, and for a second he
+paused. The girl shut her eyes in unspeakable terror, and her knees
+gave way beneath her. As she sank, Grom's spirit rose to the
+emergency. The bears were now almost upon them. He jerked the girl
+violently to her feet, and spoke to her in a voice that brought her
+back to herself. Dragging her by the wrist, he ran on straight for the
+barrier. The girl, obedient to his order, shrank close to his side and
+ran on bravely, keeping her eyes upon the ground.
+
+"If they are gods, those bright, dancing things," said Grom, with a
+confidence he was far from feeling, "they will save us. If they are
+devils, I will fight them."
+
+A little to the right appeared a gap in the leaping barrier, an
+opening some fifty feet across. Grom made for the center of this
+opening. The fissure here was not more than three feet in width. The
+runners took it in their stride. But a fierce heat struck up from it.
+It filled the girl with such horror that her senses failed her
+utterly. She ran on blindly a dozen paces more, then reeled and fell
+in a swoon. Before her body touched the ground, Grom had swung her up
+into his arms, but as he did so he looked back.
+
+The bears were no longer pursuing. A spear's-throw back they had
+stopped, growling and whining, and swaying their mountainous forms
+from side to side in angry irresolution.
+
+"They fear the bright, dancing things," said Grom to himself; and
+added, with a throb of exultation, "which I do not fear."
+
+Noticing for the first time in his excitement that the ground, here
+parched and bare, was uncomfortably hot beneath his feet, he carried
+his burden a few rods further on, to where the green began again, and
+laid her down on the thick herbage. Then he turned to see what the
+bears were going to do.
+
+Seeing that their intended prey made no further effort to flee, the
+two monsters grew still more excited. For a moment Grom thought they
+would dare the passage of the barrier, but he was reassured to see
+that the flames filled them with an insuperable fear. They dared not
+come nearer than the thin edges of the verdure. At last, as if the
+same notion had struck them both at once, they whirled about
+simultaneously, made off among the dense thickets to the right, and
+disappeared.
+
+Grom knew far too well the obstinate vindictiveness of their kind to
+think that they had given up the chase; but, feeling safe for the
+present, and seeing that the girl, recovered from her swoon, was
+sitting up and staring with awed eyes at the line of fire, he turned
+all his attention to these mysterious, shining, leaping shapes to
+which they owed their escape.
+
+With an attitude of deference, yet carrying both club and spear in
+readiness, he slowly approached the barrier, at the point where the
+flames were lowest and least imposing. Their heat made him very
+uneasy, 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, was
+uncomfortable to his naked flesh, but as he stood there wondering and
+took no further hurt, his confidence grew. At length he dared to
+stretch out his spear-tip and touch the flames, very respectfully. The
+green-hide thongs which bound the flint to the wood smoked, shriveled
+and hissed. He withdrew the weapon in alarm, and examined the tip. It
+was blackened, and hot to the touch. But, seeing that the bright
+dancers had taken no notice, he repeated the experiment. Several times
+he repeated it, deeply pondering, while the girl, from her place at
+the edge of the grass, stared with the wide eyes of a child.
+
+At last, though the green thongs still held, the dry wood burst into
+flame. Startled to find that when he drew the point back he brought a
+portion of the shining creature with it, Grom dashed the weapon down
+upon the ground. The flame, insufficiently started, flickered and
+died. But it left a spark, winking redly on the blackened wood.
+Audacious in his consuming curiosity, Grom touched it with his finger.
+It stung smartly, and Grom snatched back his finger with an
+exclamation of alarm. But by that touch the spark itself was
+extinguished. That was an amazing thing. Sucking his finger, Grom
+stood 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 not
+understand it. But at least the Mysterious Ones were not invincible,
+however much the bears feared them. Well, he did not fear them, he
+said proudly in his heart. Aloud he said to A-ya:
+
+"The Shining Dancers are our friends, but they do not like to be
+touched. If you touch them, they bite."
+
+His heart swelled with a vast, unformulated hope. Ideas, possibilities
+which he could not yet grasp, seethed in his brain. Dimly, but
+overpoweringly, he realized that he had passed the threshold of a new
+world. 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 he
+withdrew it. Then he held it upright, burning like a torch. As he
+gazed at it raptly a scream from the girl aroused him. She had sprung
+to her feet and stood staring behind her, not knowing which way to run
+because of her fear of the fire. And there, not twenty paces from her,
+their giant grey bulks half emerging from the thicket, stood the
+bears, slavering in their fury but afraid to come nearer the flame.
+
+With a shout, Grom darted at them, and the wind of his going fanned
+his spear-point to a fierce blaze. The girl screamed again at the
+sight, but bravely stood her ground. The bears shrank, growled,
+then turned and fled. With a dozen leaps Grom was upon them. The
+flame was already licking up the spear-shaft almost to his grip.
+With all his force he threw, and the flint tip buried itself in the
+nearest monster's haunch. The long fur blazed, and, in a frenzy of
+terror, the great beasts went crashing off through the coverts. The
+fire was speedily whipped out by the branches, but their panic was
+uncontrollable; and long after they had passed out of sight the sounds
+of their wild flight could be followed. Grom's heart came near
+bursting with exultation, but he disdained to show it. He turned to
+the girl, and said quietly: "They will not come back." And the girl
+threw herself at his feet in adoration.
+
+And now for hours Grom sat motionless, pondering, pondering, and
+watching the line of flames with deep eyes. The girl did not dare to
+interrupt his thoughts. With the going of the sun came a chill breeze
+drawing down from the ridges. Grom rose, led the girl nearer the
+flames, and reseated himself. As the girl realized the kindly and
+comforting warmth her fears diminished. She laughed softly, turned her
+shapely body round and round in the glow, and then curled herself up
+like a cat at Grom's knees.
+
+At last Grom arose once more. Picking up his remaining spear, he
+approached the fire with decision, and thrust the butt, instead of the
+tip, into the flame. When it was well alight, he thrust it down upon a
+tuft of withered grass. The stuff caught at once, blazed up and died
+out. Then Grom rolled the burning spear-butt on the earth till it,
+too, was quite extinguished. The sparks still winking in the grass he
+struck with his palm. They stung him, but they perished. He drew
+himself up to his full height, turned to the girl and stretched out
+his blackened hand. The girl sprang to her feet, thrilled and
+wondering.
+
+"See," said Grom, "I have made the bright Dancing Ones my servants.
+The tribe shall come here. And we shall be the masters of all
+things."
+
+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 cheek
+against his knee. He lifted her into the hollow of his great arm, and
+she leaned against him, gazing up into his face, while he stood
+staring 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 diagonally
+two-thirds of the way across the mouth of the valley, the line of fire
+waved and flickered against the gathering dark. Sometimes only a few
+inches high, sometimes sinking suddenly out of sight, and then again
+as 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 their
+crests, and thrust out shooting tongues, till Grom, sitting on his
+haunches and staring with fascinated eyes, had no choice but to
+believe that they were live things like himself. The girl, curled up
+at his side like a cat, paid little attention to the marvel of the
+flames. Her big, dark eyes, wild and furtive under the dark, tangled
+masses of her hair, kept wandering back and forth between the man's
+brooding face and the obscure black thickets which filled the valley
+behind him. The dancing flames she did not understand, but she
+understood the ponderous crashing, and growls, and savage cries which
+came from those black thickets and slopes of tumbled rocks. The man
+being absorbed in watching the wonders of the flames, and apparently
+all-forgetful of the perils prowling back there in the dark, it was
+plainly her duty to keep watch.
+
+From time to time Grom would drag his eyes away from their contemplation
+of the flames to study intently the charred spots on his club and the
+burned, blackened end of his spear. He looked down at the lithe figure of
+the watching girl, and laid a great, hairy hand on her shoulder in a musing
+caress, as if appraising her, and delighting in her, and finding in her
+a mate altogether to his desire, although but a child to his inmost
+thoughts. But those sounds of menace from the darkness behind him he
+affected not to hear at all. He could see from the girl's eyes that the
+menace was not yet close at hand; and since he had learned the power of the
+fire, and his own mastery over that power, he felt himself suddenly little
+less than a god. The fire was surely something of a god; and if he had
+any 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 heart
+swelled with a pride such as he had never before conceived, and his
+brain seethed with vague but splendid possibilities. Never before had
+he, though at heart the bravest of his brave clan, been able to listen
+to the terrible voices of the cave-bear, the cave-hyena, or the
+saber-tooth without fear, without the knowledge that his own safety lay in
+flight. Now he feared them not at all.
+
+A louder roaring came out of the shadows, closer than before, and he
+saw A-ya's eyes dilate as she clutched at his knee. A slow smile
+spread across his bony face, and he turned about, rising to his feet
+as he did so, and lifting the girl with him.
+
+With a new, strange warmth at his heart he realized how fully the girl
+trusted him, how cool and steady was her courage. For there, along the
+edge of the lighted space, glaring forth from the fringes of the
+thickets, were the monstrous beasts whom man had most cause to dread.
+Nearest, his whole tawny length emerging from the brush, crouched a
+giant saber-tooth with the daggers of his tusks, ten inches long,
+agleam in the light of the dancing flames. He was not more than thirty
+or forty paces distant, and his tail twitched heavily from side to
+side as if he were trying to nerve himself up to a closer approach to
+the fire. Some twenty paces further along the fringe of mingled light
+and shadow, their bodies thrust half way forth from the undergrowth,
+stood a pair of huge, ruddy cave-bears, their monstrous heads held low
+and swaying surlily from side to side as they eyed the prey which they
+dared not rush in and seize. The man-animal they had hitherto regarded
+as easy prey, and they were filled with rage at the temerity of these
+two humans in remaining so near the dreaded flames. Intent upon them,
+they paid no heed to their great enemy, the saber-toothed, with whom
+they were at endless and deadly feud. Away off to the left, quite
+clear of the woods, but safely remote from the fire, a pack of huge
+cave-hyenas sat up on their haunches, their long, red tongues hanging
+out. With jaws powerful enough to crack the thigh-bones of the urus,
+they nevertheless hesitated to obtrude themselves on the notice either
+of the crouching saber-tooth or of the two giant bears.
+
+With neither the bears nor the great hyenas did Grom anticipate any
+trouble. But he felt it barely possible that the saber-tooth might
+dare a rush in. Snatching up a dry branch, and leading the girl with
+him by the wrist, he backed slowly nearer the flames. Terrified at
+their dancing and the scorching of their breath, the girl sank down on
+her naked knees and covered her face with her hair. Smiling at her
+terror, Grom thrust the branch into the flames. When it was all ablaze
+he raised it above his head, and, carrying his spear in his right
+hand, he rushed at the saber-tooth. For a few seconds the monster
+faced his approach, but Grom saw the shrinking in his furious eyes,
+and came on fearlessly. At last the beast whipped about with a
+screeching snarl, and raced back into the woods. Then Grom turned to
+the bears, but they had not stayed to receive his attentions. The
+sight of the flames bursting, as it seemed, from the man's shaggy head
+as he ran, was too much for them, and they had slunk back discreetly
+into the shadows.
+
+Grom threw the blazing stick on the ground, laid several more branches
+upon it, and presently had a fine fire of his own going. He seized a
+small branch and hurled it at the hyenas, sending them off with their
+tails 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 it
+drove him back. Returning to the side of the wondering girl, he sat
+down, and contemplated his handiwork with swelling pride. When the
+flames died down he piled on more branches till they blazed again to
+the height of the nearest tree-tops. This he repeated, thoughtfully,
+several times, till he had assured himself of his power to make this
+bright, devouring god great or little at his pleasure.
+
+This stupendous fact established clearly, Grom brought an armful of
+grass and foliage, and made the girl take her sleep. He himself
+continued for an hour or two his experiments with the fire, building
+small ones in a circle about him, discovering that green branches
+would not burn well, and brooding with knit brows over each new center
+of light and heat which he created.
+
+Then, seated on his haunches beside the sleeping A-ya, he pondered on
+the future of his tribe, on the change in its fortunes which this
+mysterious new creature was bound to bring about. At last, when the
+night was half worn through, he awakened the girl, bade her keep sharp
+watch, and threw himself down to sleep, indifferent to the roars, and
+snarls, and dreadful cries which came from the darkness of the upper
+valley.
+
+The valley looked straight into the east. When the sun rose, its
+unclouded, level rays paled the dancing barrier of flames almost to
+invisibility. Refreshed by their few hours' sleep in the vital warmth,
+Grom and the girl stood erect in the flooding light and scanned the
+strange landscape. Grom's sagacious eyes noted the fertility of the
+level lands at a distance from the fire, and of the clefts, ledges and
+lower slopes of the tumbled volcanic hills. Here and there he made out
+the openings of caves, half overgrown with vines and bush. And he was
+satisfied that this was the land for his tribe to occupy.
+
+That it was infested with all those monstrous beasts which were Man's
+deadliest foes seemed to him no longer a fact worth considering. The
+bright god which he had conquered should be made to conquer them. Some
+inkling of his purposes he confided to the girl, who stood looking up
+at him with eyes of dog-like devotion from under the matted splendor
+of 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 at
+his ease with the flames, and drive the hyena, the saber-tooth and the
+terrible red bear before him.
+
+When the two started on their journey back to the Country of the
+Little Hills, Grom carried with him a bundle of blazing brands. He had
+conceived the idea of keeping the bright god alive by feeding him
+continually as they went, and of renewing his might from time to time
+by stopping to build a big fire.
+
+The undertaking proved a troublesome one from the first. The brand
+kept the great beasts at a distance, time and again the red coals
+almost died out, and Grom had anxious and laborious moments nursing
+them again into activity; and the care of the mysterious things made
+progress slow. Grom learned much, and rapidly, in these anxious
+efforts. He discovered once, just at a critical moment, the remarkable
+efficacy 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 Grom's nerve was of steel.
+
+Ordering her to stop, he flung the brands to the ground, and snatched
+a double handful of grass to feed the dying flame. Luckily, the grass
+was dry. It flared up on the sudden. The bear stopped short. Grom
+piled on more grass, shouted arrogantly, and rushed at the beast with
+a blazing handful. It was a light and harmless flame, almost instantly
+extinguished. But it was too mysterious for the monster to face.
+
+Grom was wise enough not to follow up his victory. Returning to the
+fire he fed it to a safe volume. And the girl, flinging herself down
+in a passion of relief and adoration, embraced his knees.
+
+After this they journeyed slowly, Grom tending the brands with
+vigilant care, and striving to break down the girl's terror of
+them. That night he built three fires about the base of a huge
+tree, gathered a supply of dry wood, taught the girl to feed the
+flames--which she did with head bowed in awe--and passed the hours
+of darkness, once so dreaded, in proud defiance of the great beasts
+which prowled and roared beyond the circle of light. He made the
+girl sleep, but he himself was too prudent to sleep, lest these
+fires of his own creation should prove false when his eye was not upon
+them.
+
+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 revive
+it, had smothered it with too much fuel. In an agony of fear and
+remorse, she knelt at Grom's side, awakened him, and showed him what
+she had done. She expected a merciless beating, according to the
+rough-and-ready customs of her tribe. But Grom had always been held a
+little peculiar, especially in his aversion to the beating of women,
+so that certain females of the tribe had even been known to question
+his manhood on that account.
+
+Furthermore, he regarded the girl with a tenderness, an admiration, an
+appreciation, which he could not but wonder at in himself, seeing that
+he had never heard of it as a customary thing that a man should regard
+a woman in any such manner. At the same time he was in a state of
+exaltation over his strange achievements, and hardly open, at the
+moment, to any common or base brutality of rage.
+
+He gave the girl one terrible look, then went and strove silently with
+the 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 that
+the flames had fled beyond recovery, he lifted her up, drew her close
+to 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 him
+again."
+
+And when the girl realized that he had no thought of beating her, but
+only wished to comfort and shield her, then she felt quite sure he was
+a god, and her heart nearly burst with the passion of her love.
+
+
+II
+
+It galled Grom's proud heart to find himself now compelled, through
+loss 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 tree
+at 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 that
+he was, he forgot no one of his ancient precautions.
+
+They had by this time passed beyond the special haunts of the red bear
+and the saber-tooth. Twice they had to run before the charge of the
+great wooly rhinoceros, against whose massive hide Grom's spear and
+club would have been about as effective as a feather duster. But they
+had fled mockingly, for the clumsy monster was no match for them in
+speed. Once, too, they had been treed by a bull urus, a gigantic white
+beast with a seven-foot spread of polished horns.
+
+But his implacable and patient rage they had cunningly evaded by
+making off unseen and unheard, through the upper branches. They came
+to earth again half a mile away, and ran on gaily, laughing at the
+picture of the furious and foolish beast waiting there at the foot of
+the tree for them to come down. Once a prowling leopard confronted
+them for a moment, only to flee in great leaps before their instant
+and unhesitating attack. Once a huge bird, nearly nine feet high, and
+with a beak over a foot in length, struck at them savagely, with a
+shrill hissing, through a fringe of reeds, because they had
+incautiously come too near its nest. But they killed it, and feasted
+on its eggs. And so, without further misadventure, they came at last
+to the skirts of their own country, and looked once more on the
+rounded, familiar, wind-swept tops of the Little Hills, sacred to the
+barrows of their dead.
+
+It was toward sunset, and the long, rosy glow was flooding the little
+amphitheater wherein the remnants of the tribe were gathered, when
+Grom crossed the brook, and came striding up the slope, with A-ya
+close behind him. She had been traveling at his side all through the
+journey, but here she respected the etiquette of her tribe, and fell
+behind submissively.
+
+Hardly noticing, or not heeding if he noticed that the tribe offered
+no vociferous welcome, and seemed sullenly surprised at his
+appearance, Grom strode straight to the Chief, whom he saw sitting on
+the judgment stone, and threw down spear and club at his feet in sign
+of fealty. But A-ya, following, was keen to note the hostile attitude
+of the tribe. Her defiant eyes darted everywhere, and everywhere noted
+black looks. She could not understand it, but she divined that there
+was some plot afoot against Grom. Her heart swelled with rage, and her
+dark-maned head went up arrogantly, for she felt as if the strongest
+and wisest of the tribe were now but children in comparison with her
+lord. But, though children, they were many, and she closed up behind
+him for a guard, grasping more firmly the shaft of her short,
+serviceable spear. She saw the broad, black, scowling visage of young
+Mawg, towering over a little group of his kinsfolk, and eyeing her
+with mingled greed and rage, and she divined at once that he was at
+the back of whatever mischief might be brewing. She answered his look
+with one of mocking scorn, and then turned her attention to the Chief,
+who was sitting in grim silence, the customary hand of welcome
+ominously withheld.
+
+A haughty look came over Grom's face, his broad shoulders squared
+themselves, and he met the Chief's eyes sternly.
+
+"I have done the bidding of Bawr the Chief," he said, in a clear
+voice, so that all the tribe might hear. "I have found a place where
+the tribe may hold themselves secure against all enemies. And I have
+come back, as was agreed, to lead the tribe thither before our enemies
+destroy us. I have done great deeds. I have not spared myself. I have
+come quickly. I have deserved well of the people. Why has Bawr the
+Chief no welcome for me?"
+
+A murmur arose from the corner where Mawg and his friends were
+grouped, but a glance from the Chief silenced it. With his piercing
+gaze making relentless inquisition of the eyes that answered his so
+steadily, he seemed to ponder Grom's words. Slowly the anger faded
+from his scarred and massy face, for he knew men; and this man, though
+his most formidable rival in strength and prestige, he instinctively
+trusted.
+
+"You have been accused," said he at length, slowly, "of deserting the
+tribe in our weakness--"
+
+A puzzled look had come over Grom's face at the word "accused"; then
+his deep eyes blazed, and he broke in upon the Chief's speech without
+ceremony.
+
+"Show me my accusers!" he demanded harshly. The Chief waved his hand
+for silence.
+
+"In our weakness!" he repeated. "But you have returned to us. So I see
+that charge was false. Also, you have been accused of stealing the
+girl A-ya. But you have brought her back. I see not what more your
+accusers have against you."
+
+Grom turned, and, with a quick, decisive motion, drew A-ya to his
+side.
+
+"Bawr the Chief knows that I am his servant, and a true man!" said he
+sternly. "I did not steal the girl. She followed me, and I had no
+thought of it."
+
+Angry jeers came from Mawg's corner, but Grom smiled coldly, and went
+on:
+
+"Not till near evening of the second day, when she was chased by
+wolves, did she reveal herself to me. And when I understood why she
+had come, I looked on her, and I saw that she was very fair and very
+brave. 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 the
+Chief. And now let Bawr show me my accusers, that I may have done with
+them quickly. For I have much to tell."
+
+"Not so, Grom," said the Chief, stretching out his hand. "I am
+satisfied that you are a true man. And for the girl, that will we
+arrange between us later. But I will not confront you with your
+accusers, for there shall be no fighting between ourselves when our
+warriors 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 is
+to be done."
+
+He got up from his seat, an immense and masterful figure, to lead the
+way to his own cave, where they might talk in private. But Grom
+hesitated, fearing lest annoyance should befall A-ya if he left her
+alone 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 the
+gaping crowd.
+
+"The girl A-ya," said he in his great voice which thundered over the
+amphitheater, "is Grom's woman. I have spoken."
+
+And he strode off toward his cave door. Grom picked up his club and
+spear. And the girl, with a haughty indifference she was far from
+feeling, strolled off toward the cave of certain old women, kinsfolk
+of the Chief.
+
+But as the meaning of the Chief's words penetrated Mawg's dull wits
+he gave vent to a great bellow of rage, and snatched up a spear to
+hurl at Grom. Before he could launch it, however, his kinsmen, who
+had no wish to bring down upon themselves both Grom's wrath and that
+of the Chief, fell upon him and bore down his arm. Raging blindly,
+Mawg struggled with them, and, having the strength of a bull, he was
+near to wrenching himself free. But other men of the tribe, seeing
+from the Chief's action that their bitterness against Grom had
+been unjustified, and remembering his past services, ran up and
+took a hand in reducing Mawg to submission. For a few seconds Grom
+looked on contemptuously; then he turned on his heel and followed
+the Chief, as if he did not hold his rival worth a further thought.
+Mawg struggled to his feet. Grom had disappeared. But his eyes fell
+on the figure of A-ya, slim and brown and tall, standing in the
+entrance of the near-by cave. He made as if to rush upon her, but a
+bunch of men stood in the way, plainly ready to stop him. He looked at
+his kinsmen, but they hung their heads sullenly. Blind with fury
+though he was, and slow of wit, he could not but see that the tribe
+as a whole was now against him. Stuttering with his rage, he shouted
+to the girl, "You will see me again!" Snatching up his club and
+spears, he rushed forth from the amphitheater, darted down the slope,
+and plunged into the thick woods beyond the brook. His kinsmen
+withdrew sullenly into their cave, followed by two young women. And
+the rest of the people looked at each other doubtfully, troubled at
+this sudden schism in the weakened tribe.
+
+"One more good warrior gone!" muttered an old man through his bush of
+matted white beard.
+
+That night Grom was too wary to sleep, suspecting that his enemy might
+return and try to snatch the girl from him under the cover of the
+dark.
+
+He was not attacked or disturbed, however, but just before dawn,
+against the gray pallor beyond the mouth of the pass, he marked four
+shapes slinking forth. As they did not return, he did not think it
+worth while to raise the alarm. When day came, it was found that two
+kinsmen of Mawg, with the two young women who were attached to them,
+had fled to join the deserter in the bush. The Chief, indignant at
+this further weakening of the tribe, declared them outlaws, and
+ordered that all--except the women, who were needed as mothers--should
+be killed as tribal traitors, at sight.
+
+
+III
+
+As was natural since he was trying to present a totally new
+conception, with no known analogies save in the lightning and the sun,
+Grom found it impossible to convey to the Chief's mind any real idea
+of the nature of his tremendous discovery. He did succeed, however, in
+making it clear to Bawr that there was a certain mighty Bright One,
+capable of putting even the saber-tooth and the red bear to instant
+flight, and that he had somehow managed to subdue this powerful and
+mysterious being into the service of the tribe. Bawr had examined with
+deep musing the strange black bite of the Bright One on Grom's club
+and spear. And he realized readily enough that with such an ally the
+tribe, even in its present state of weakness, would be able to defy
+any further invasions of the bow-legged beast-men from the east. There
+was a rumor, vague enough but disquieting, of another migration of the
+beast-men under way. So there was no time to lose. Bawr gave orders
+that 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 and
+Grom's miraculous subjugation of it to his will, had only spread
+terror in the tribe. The dread of this unknown Bright One, which was
+plainly capable of devouring them all if Grom should lose control of
+it, 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, confessedly
+the 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 think
+that the hordes of the Bow-legs were never likely to come that way
+again. 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 Grom being now regarded as a dangerous wizard, the preparation
+for departure went on as smoothly as if all were of one mind.
+Packing was no great matter to the People of the Little Hills, the
+richest of whom could transport all his wealth on the back of the
+feeblest of his wives. So it came that before the sun marked noon
+the whole tribe was on the march, trailing forth from the neck of
+the amphitheater at the heels of Grom and A-ya, and picking their way
+over the bones of their slain enemies which the vultures and the
+jackals had already polished white. Bawr, the Chief, came last,
+seeing to it that there were no laggards; and as the tail of the
+straggling procession left the pass he climbed swiftly to the
+nearest pinnacle of rock to take observation. He marked Grom and
+the girl, the tribe strung out dejectedly behind them, winding off
+to 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 eyes
+to the right. Very far off, in a space of open ground by the
+brookside, he marked the movement of confused, living masses, of a
+dull brown on the green. A closer look convinced him that the
+moving masses were men--new hordes of the beast-men, the gaping-nosed
+Bow-legs.
+
+"Grom is a true man," he muttered, with satisfaction, and went leaping
+like a stag down the slope to rejoin the tribe. When news of what he
+had seen was passed from mouth to mouth through the tribe every murmur
+was hushed, and the sulkiest laggards pushed on feverishly, as if
+dreading a rush of the beast-men from every cleft and glade.
+
+The journey proved, for the most part, uneventful. Traveling in a
+compact mass, only by broad day, their numbers and their air of
+confidence kept the red bear and the saber-tooth, the black lion and
+the wolf-pack, from venturing to molest them. By the Chief's orders
+they maintained a noisy chatter, with laughter and shouting, as soon
+as they felt themselves safely beyond range of the beast-men's ears.
+For Bawr had observed that even the saber-tooth had a certain
+uneasiness at the sound of many human voices together. At night--and
+it was their rule to make camp while the sun was yet several hours
+high--with the aid of their flint spear-heads they would laboriously
+cut down the saplings of the long-thorned acacia, and surround the
+camp with a barrier which the monsters dared not assail. Even so,
+however, the nights were trying enough to the stoutest nerves. Half
+the tribe at a time was obliged to stand on guard, and there was
+little sleep to refresh the weariest when the shadows beyond the
+barriers were alive with mutterings and prowlings, and terrible,
+paling, gleaming eyes.
+
+On the fourth day of the journey, however, the tribe met a foe whose
+dense 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 Grom and the girl into the tree-tops--burst up, dripping
+and mud-streaked from his wallow in a reedy pool, and came charging
+upon the travelers with a roar. No doubt an outcast from the herd, he
+was mad with the lust of killing. With shouts of warning and shrieks
+of fear the tribe scattered in every direction. The nearest warriors
+hurled their spears as they sprang aside, and several of the weapons
+went deep into the monster's flanks, but without checking him. He had
+fixed his eyes on one victim, an old man with a conspicuous shock of
+snow-white hair, and him he followed inexorably. The doomed wretch
+screamed with despair when he found himself thus hideously selected,
+and ran, doubling like a rabbit. Just as the monster overtook him he
+fell, paralyzed with his fright, and one tremendous horn pinned him to
+the earth. At this instant the Chief arrived, running up from the rear
+of the line, and Grom, coming from the front. The Chief, closing in
+fearlessly, swung his club with all his strength across the beast's
+front, blinding one eye, and confusing him for the fraction of a
+moment. And in that moment, Grom, 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, the
+monster, with a hoarse cough, staggered forward across his victim,
+fell upon his knees, and slowly sank, while the blood emptied itself
+in enormous, smoking jets from the wound.
+
+The incident caused a day's delay in the march; for there was the dead
+elder to be buried, with heavy stones heaped over his body, according
+to the custom of the tribe, and there was also the meat of the slain
+bull to be cut up for carrying--a rank food, but sustaining, and not
+to be despised when one is on a journey with uncertainties ahead. And
+the delay was more than compensated for by the new spirit which now
+seized this poor, fugitive remnant of the Tribe of the Little Hills.
+The speedy and spectacular triumph over a foe so formidable as the
+giant bull urus was unanimously accepted as an omen of good fortune.
+
+As they approached the valley whose mouth was guarded by the line of
+volcanic fire, Grom purposely led the tribe by such a path that they
+should 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 what
+was to come. Then suddenly around into the open; and there, not a
+hundred paces distant, was the valley-mouth, and the long, thin line
+of flickering scarlet tongues drawn across it.
+
+As the people came in sight of the incomprehensible phenomenon, they
+stared for a moment, gasping, or uttering low cries; then they fell
+upon their faces in awe. Grom remained standing, leaning upon his
+spear; and A-ya stood with bowed head close behind him. When the
+Chief, shepherding and guarding the rear flanks, emerged around the
+elbow of woods and saw his people thus prostrate before the shining
+wonder, he too was moved to follow their example, for his heart went
+cold within him. But not without reason was he Chief, for he could
+control himself as well as others. A pallor spread beneath the smoky
+tan of his broad features, but without an instant's hesitation he
+strode to the front, and stood like Grom, with unbowed head, leaning
+calmly on his great club. His thought was that the Shining One must be
+indeed a god, and might, indeed, slay him from afar, like the
+lightning, but it could not make him afraid.
+
+Grom gave him a quick look of approval. "Tell the people," said he,
+"to follow us round through the open space yonder, and into the
+valley, that we may make camp, for there are many great beasts here,
+and very fierce. And tell them not to approach the Shining One, lest
+he smite them, but also not to fear, for he will not come at them."
+
+When the people--trembling, staring with fascinated eyes at the
+dancing array, and shrinking nervously from the strange warmth--had
+all been gathered into the open space between the fire and the
+thickets, Grom led the Chief up to the flames and hurriedly explained
+to 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 to
+help him build other fires along the edge of the thickets in order to
+keep the monsters at bay. And all the while the tribe sat watching,
+huddled on their haunches, with mouths agape and eyes rolling in
+amazement.
+
+Bawr the Chief, meanwhile, was revolving many things in his sagacious
+brain, as he alternately lighted and extinguished the little, eating
+flames which fixed themselves upon the dry wood when he held it in the
+blaze. His mind was of a very different order from that of Grom,
+though, perhaps, not less capacious and capable. Grom was the
+discoverer, the initiator, while Bawr was essentially the ruler,
+concerned to apply all he learned to the extension and securing of his
+power. It was his realization of Grom's transparent honesty and
+indifference to power which made him so free from jealousy of Grom's
+prestige. His shrewd perceptions told him that Grom would far rather
+see him rule the tribe, so long as he ruled it effectually, than be
+troubled with the task himself. But there were others in the tribe
+whom he suspected of being less disinterested--who were capable of
+becoming troublesome if ever he should find his strength failing. One
+of these, in particular, a gigantic, black-browed fellow by the name
+of Ne-boo, remotely akin to the deserter Mawg, was now watching him
+with eyes more keen and considerate than those of his companions. As
+Bawr became conscious of this inquiring, crafty gaze, he made a slip,
+and closed his left hand on a portion of his branch which was still
+glowing red. With superb nerve he gave no sign of the hurt. And he
+thought quickly: he had taken a liberty with the Bright One, and been
+bitten by those mysterious, shining teeth which left a scar of black.
+Well, someone else should be bitten, also. Calmly heating the branch
+again till it was a live coal for three-quarters of its length, he
+called the crafty-eyed warrior to him. The man came, uneasy, but full
+of interest.
+
+"Take this, and hold it for me," said Bawr, and tossed him the red
+brand. With shrinking hands Ne-boo caught it, to drop it instantly
+with a yell of pain and terror. It fell, scraping his leg, and his
+foot, and in his fright he threw himself down beside it, begging it
+not to smite him again.
+
+"Strange," said Bawr, in a voice for all the tribe to hear, "the
+Shining One will not suffer Ne-boo to touch him." With the air of a
+high priest he picked the brand up, and held it again into the flames.
+And Grom returning at this moment to his side, he commanded in a low
+voice: "Let none but ourselves attend or touch the Bright One."
+
+Grom, his mind occupied with plans for the settling of the tribe,
+agreed without asking the reason for this decree. He was thinking
+about getting the tribe housed in the caves which he had noticed in
+the steep sides of the valley. He knew well enough that these caves
+were the houses of the red bear, the saber-tooth and the bone-crushing
+hyenas, but, as he explained to the Chief with thrilling elation, the
+Shining One would drive these monsters out, and teach them to keep
+their distance. To Bawr, who had had some experience in his day with
+the red bear and the saber-tooth, and who had not yet seen all that
+these dancing tongues of gold and scarlet could do, the enterprise
+seemed a formidable one. But he sagaciously reserved his judgment,
+pondering things that he felt sure Grom would not dream of.
+
+That night, when all was thick darkness beyond the magic circle of the
+fires, the People of the Little Hills sat or crouched trembling and
+wondering, while monstrous dim shapes of such bears or tigers as they
+had never imagined in their worst nightmares prowled roaring all about
+them, held off by nothing more substantial than just those thin and
+darting tongues of flame. That the little, bright things could bite
+terribly they had evidence enough, both in the charred and corroded
+wood which the flames had licked, and in the angry wounds of Ne-boo.
+At the same time they saw their Chief and Grom apparently handling the
+Terror with impunity, and the girl A-ya approaching it and serving it
+freely, though always with bowed head and every mark of awe.
+
+But what made the deepest, the most ineffaceable impression on the
+minds of the tribe was to see Grom and the Chief, each waving a pair
+of dead branches all aflame, charge at a pair of giant saber-tooths
+who had ventured too near, and drive them scurrying like frightened
+sheep into the bush. Repeating the tactics which he had previously
+found so effective, Grom hurled one of his flaming weapons after the
+fugitives--an example which the Chief, not to be outshone, followed
+instantly. The result was startling. The brands chanced to fall where
+there was a great accumulation of dry wood and twigs and leaves. In a
+moment, as it seemed, the flames had leapt up into full fury, and were
+chasing the fugitives up the valley with a roar. In the sudden great
+glare could be seen saber-tooths stretching out in panic-stricken
+flight, burly red bear fleeing with their awkward but deadly swift
+gallop, huge hyenas scattering to this side and that, and many furtive
+unknown creatures driven into a blind and howling rout. Grom himself
+was as thunderstruck as any one at the amazing result of his action,
+but his quick wits told him to disguise his astonishment, and bear
+himself as if it were exactly what he had planned. The Chief copied
+his attitude with scrupulous precision and unfailing nerve, though
+quite prepared to see the red whirlwind suddenly turn back and blot
+himself, the audacious Grom, and the whole shuddering tribe from the
+face of the outraged earth. But no such thing happened. The torrent of
+flame raged straight up the valley, cutting a path some fifty odd
+paces in width, and leaving a track of smoldering, winking, red stems
+and stumps behind it. And all the beasts hid themselves in their
+terror so that not one of them was seen again that night. As for the
+People of the Little Hills, they were now ready to fall down and put
+dust in their hair in utter abasement, if either Grom or the Chief so
+much as looked at them.
+
+Soon after sunrise the next day, the Chief and Grom, bearing lighted
+brands, and followed close by A-ya with a bundle of dry faggots, twigs
+and grass, took possession of two great caves on the southward-facing
+slope of the valley. The giant bears which occupied one of them fled
+ignominiously at the first threat of the flames, having been scorched
+and thoroughly cowed by the conflagration of the previous night. The
+other cave had been already vacated by the hyena pack, which had no
+stomach to face these throwers of flame. Before the mouth of each
+cave, at a safe distance, a fire was lighted--a notice to all the
+beasts that their rule was at an end. The whole tribe was set to the
+gathering of a great store of fuel, which was heaped about the mouths
+of the caves as a shield against the weather. Then the people began to
+settle themselves in their new home, secure in the faith that not even
+the hordes of the Bow-legs, should they chance that way, would have
+the temerity to face their new and terrible protector.
+
+When all was ordered to his satisfaction, the Chief called Grom to his
+side. The two stood apart, and watched the tall figure of A-ya moving
+from the one fire to the other, and tending them reverently, as one
+performing a rite. Grom's eyes took on a certain illumination at the
+sight of her, a look which the Chief had never observed in any man's
+eyes before. But he thought little of it, for his mind was full of
+other matters.
+
+"It is well," said he presently, in a low voice, "that the service and
+understanding of the Bright One should not be allowed to the people,
+but should be kept strictly to ourselves, and to those whom we shall
+choose 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 only
+the Bright One, instead of, as heretofore, the Thunder, and the Wind,
+and the unknown Spirits, which, after all, as far as I can see, have
+never been able to do much either for or against us. But this Bright
+One is a real god, such as we can be sure of. And you and I shall be
+his priests. And only we shall be allowed to understand him."
+
+"That is good," agreed Grom, whose brain was busy devising other ways
+of 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 Grom's face, "or she must
+be a priest along with us."
+
+"I think she will be a very good priest," said Grom drily, his eyes
+resting upon her.
+
+Then the Chief, ascending a rock between the two fires, spoke to the
+people, and decreed as he had said. He told a little about the Shining
+One, just so much as he thought it good for his hearers to know. He
+declared that the ones he had chosen for the great honor of serving
+the fires must tend them by turns, night and day, and guard them with
+their lives; for that, if one or the other should be suffered to die
+out, some great disaster would assuredly come upon the tribe.
+
+"And henceforth," he concluded, "you shall not be called the People of
+the Little Hills; for these ridges, indeed, are not such hills as
+those whose bald and windy tops are keeping the bones of our fathers.
+But you shall be known and feared greatly by our enemies as 'The
+Children 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 two
+great 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 and
+began to recover heart. Before each cave-mouth, tended night and day,
+burned the sacred flame, its tongues licked upwards in gold and
+scarlet with a radiance from which all the tribe, with the sole
+exceptions of Bawr, the Chief, and Grom, his right hand and councilor,
+were wont to avert their eyes in awe whenever they passed it in their
+comings and goings. Only from a distance would they presume to look at
+the flames directly; and ever as they looked their wonder and their
+reverence grew. Their trust in the protection of the Shining One came
+to have no bounds, for night after night would the great red bears
+return, prowling in the mysterious gloom just beyond the ring of
+light, with their dreadful eyes turned fixedly upon their former
+habitation, only to be driven off ignominiously when Grom rushed at
+them with a shout and a flaming torch above his head. And night after
+night would the troops of the hyenas come back, their monstrous-jowled
+heads swinging low from their mighty shoulders, to sit and howl their
+devilish laughter above their ancient lair, only to slink off in cowed
+silence when the Chief would hurl a blazing brand among them. When the
+beasts were thus discomfited and abashed, the boldest of the warriors
+would go leaping after them and bring down the hindermost with spears.
+So it came about that presently the great animals knew themselves
+beaten, and sullenly withdrew to the other side of the hills.
+
+It was just this country at the other side of the hills which most
+appealed to the restless imagination of Grom. Within the valley--which
+widened out, as it receded from its fiery gateway, to enclose league
+upon league of fertile plain--was good hunting, along with an
+abundance of roots, fruits and edible herbs. But in Grom's heart
+burned that spirit of unquenchable expectation which has led the race
+of Man upwards through all obstacles--the urge to find out ever what
+lies beyond. So the saw-toothed line of these dark, volcanic summits
+drew him irresistibly, with the promise of unknown wonders hidden
+behind them.
+
+During these few weeks since coming to the Valley of the Fire, Grom
+had been tirelessly experimenting with the bright element, trying this
+kind of fuel and that, one after another, in order to learn what food
+was most acceptable to it. He learned that certain substances it would
+devour in raging haste, only to fail and die soon after; or not truly
+to die, he imagined, but to flee back unseen to its dancing,
+flickering source at the valley mouth. Other substances he found that
+it would consume slowly, but pertinaciously. While into yet others,
+such as dry turf and punk, it would eat its way and hide, maintaining
+therein for a long time a retired but potent existence, ready to leap
+into radiant life under certain provocation. His invention stimulated
+by these experiments, he had made himself several hollow tubes of a
+thick green bark whipped about with thongs, and had stuffed them with
+that mixture of turf and punk which he found best calculated to hold
+the furtive seeds of fire alive.
+
+With one of these slow torches alight, and several spare ones slung
+over his shoulders, Grom set out to cross the pointed hills and seek
+new wonders in the lands beyond. The tall girl, A-ya, went with him.
+This not being customary in the tribe, they gave reasons. Grom said
+that he needed the girl because she alone knew how rightly to serve
+and tend the Shining One in combat. It was a good reason, but he was
+amazed to find in his heart so deep a desire for her that he was
+ill-content whenever his eyes could not rest upon her. There was no
+one in the tribe with whom he could discuss this strange emotion, for
+no one, not even the wise and subtle-minded Chief, would have
+comprehended it--romantic love not yet having come openly to these men
+of the Morning of Time. So Grom gave the lesser reason, which all,
+including himself, could understand. As for the girl, she said that
+whatever her lord commanded she must needs obey, which she did with a
+most seemly readiness. But in her heart she knew that if her man had
+commanded her to stay behind, she would have obeyed only so long as he
+remained in sight, and would then have followed him.
+
+Like Grom, the girl carried two flint-headed spears. Both wore clumsy
+but effective slivers of flint, for knives, in their girdles of
+twisted skin. The girl, besides her weapons, carried a substantial
+burden of strips of meat dried hard in the sun, in case game should
+prove scarce or elusive in the land beyond the hills. But when they
+had got well out of sight of the caves, Grom turned, relieved her of
+her burdens which, according to tribal conventions, it was her duty to
+carry for her man, and gave her instead the light but precious tube of
+fire.
+
+As they ascended the ragged slopes, vegetation grew sparse, and when
+toward nightfall they gained the pass which Grom was making for--a
+deep cleft between two steep red and purple peaks--the rock beneath
+their feet was naked but for a low growth of flowering herbs and
+thorn. The pass was too high for the aloe and mesembryanthemum to
+flourish, and the lava-bed which floored it was yet too new to have
+clothed itself in any of the larger mountain-loving trees. Here they
+passed 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 even
+to approach it.
+
+On the following day they traveled swiftly, but the pass was long. It
+was 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 come
+to explore.
+
+It was a vast, rolling plain, golden-green with rank, cane-like
+grasses, dotted with innumerable clumps of trees, and laced with full
+watercourses which lay in spacious loops of blue and silver. Here and
+there 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-way
+down the steep, toward the right, smoked and smouldered a shallow,
+saucer-shaped crater from whose broken lower rim a purple-brown
+serpent of comparatively recent lava descended in sluggish curves
+across the intense green.
+
+Somewhat to the girl's apprehension, Grom seemed anxious to
+investigate the smoking crater, but the only practicable path down the
+mountain led them away from it, so he was content to leave it for
+another time and another, perhaps less repellent, approach.
+
+Descending presently into a region of ledges and ravines clothed with
+dense thickets, they found on every hand traces of the giant bears and
+the saber-tooth tigers whom they had driven from the caves in the
+Valley of Fire. Grom hurriedly whirled the smoldering torch into a
+flame, and from it lighted a couple of resinous brands, one for
+himself, and one for A-ya to carry. Thus armed, they fearlessly
+followed the broad trail of bears, which led them very conveniently
+down the steep. And bear and saber-tooth alike, at sight of the flame
+thus apparently seeking them out, remembered their recent scorching
+discomfiture, and slunk off like whipped curs.
+
+Grom's immediate object was to make his way straight to the shores of
+that great water, whose gleaming on the horizon had been like an
+invitation to his inquiring spirit. But when early in the forenoon of
+the fourth day they reached the lowlands, he found that his way would
+be anything but straight. The immense grasses, a species of cane, grew
+so tall, so dense and so thick in the stem, that it was impossible to
+force a path through them just where he would.
+
+He saw that he must use the trails of the wild beasts, which
+intersected it in all directions. There were the tracks of every
+animal he knew--the hunters and the hunted alike--and of many more
+which he did not know. But one broad trail in particular arrested his
+attention. It struck such fear to the heart of the girl, whose eyes
+were keen and understanding, that her knees trembled beneath her, and
+had she dared she would have begged Grom to turn back from a land
+which held such monsters.
+
+Even Grom himself felt a thrill of awe as he stared at the trail which
+bespoke so mighty a traveler. Wherever it led, the sturdiest growths
+were crushed flat as if some huge bowlder from the mountains had been
+rolled over them. And the monster footprints, which here and there
+stamped themselves clearly in the trail, were thrice the size of those
+of the hugest mammoth.
+
+Grom stooped and studied these footprints, pondering them with knit
+brows. What manner of giant it might be which moved on such colossal
+and misshapen members it was beyond his wits to guess. But of a surety
+it was a fine roadmaker!
+
+With a confident arrogance born of the knowledge that he was the lord
+of Fire, he deliberately chose to pursue this dreadful trail. And the
+girl, hiding her terror lest it should diminish her credit in his
+sight, followed close at his elbow, her bright eyes tirelessly
+searching the jungle on either side.
+
+Suddenly behind them came a confused, terrifying noise of panting
+breaths and trampling feet. It came sweeping down the broad trail.
+There were grunting cries, also; and Grom understood at once that a
+herd of pig-tapirs--heavy-footed, timorous beasts, as tall as
+heifers--were sweeping down upon them in mad flight before some
+unknown pursuer.
+
+Against that blind panic, that headlong frantic rush, he knew that
+blazing 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 should
+come to, and let the rout go by. In half a minute or so, over the tops
+of the giant grasses, they sighted such a tree, only a few hundred
+yards ahead. The trail, swerving opportunely, appeared to lead
+directly towards its foot, and they raced on, the girl now laughing
+softly with excitement, and forgetting her fear of the unknown because
+of the known peril behind her. It pleased her curiously to find that
+her man had not grown too divine to be ready to run away on fitting
+occasion; and she kept glancing at him from under her dark tangle of
+hair with eyes of passionate possession.
+
+The wild uproar behind was drawing nearer swiftly, but the refuge was
+now not more than fifty paces ahead. All at once the way to it was
+barred. Out from a little side-track on the right came lumbering a
+gigantic rhinoceros, his creased and folded hide clothed in matted
+brown wool and caked with clay. He swung round into the trail, almost
+blocking it with his bulk, stared for a couple of seconds with evil
+little eyes at the two slim beings before him, then lowered the huge
+double horn that armed his snout, and charged at them with a grunt of
+fury.
+
+Caught thus fairly between the devil before, and the deep sea of
+trampling hoofs behind, Grom had no choice. A second's waving of the
+lighted brands convinced him that the rhinoceros was too dense of
+brain to fear the fire, or even to notice it. Once more clutching the
+girl's hand, he ran back a little way, seeking to draw the two perils
+together, and give them an opportunity to distract each other's
+attention.
+
+He ran back till the flying, plunging herd of the pig-tapirs came into
+full view around the curve of the trail. Then, with all his strength,
+he forced his way into the grass, on the left, shouldering aside the
+upright stems to make room for the girl to enter. She hurled her
+blazing brand full into the face of the rhinoceros, hoping to confuse
+or divert him for an instant, then thrust herself lithely in past
+Grom.
+
+The rhinoceros was diverted for an instant. The smoke and sparks half
+blinded him, and in a paroxysm of fury he checked himself to trample
+the strange assailant under foot. Then he thundered forward. But the
+tough stems of the grass had closed up again. The two fugitives were
+hidden. He saw the packed herd of the tapirs bearing down upon him;
+and, forgetting the insignificant creatures who had first roused his
+anger, he charged forward at full speed to meet this new foe.
+
+Realizing well enough that in three or four seconds more the crash
+would come, and that the struggle between the rhinoceros and the
+maddened herd would be little short of a cataclysm, Grom and the girl
+struggled breathlessly to force themselves to a safe distance lest
+they should be crushed in the melee.
+
+The sweat ran down into their eyes, and swarms of tiny insects,
+breeding in the giant stems, choked their throats and nostrils; but
+they wrestled their way onward blindly, foot by foot. Behind them, out
+in the trail, came a ponderous crash, and, then an appalling explosion
+of squeals, screams, grunts and roars. The next instant the rigid
+stems gave way suddenly before them, and they fell forward, with a
+startled cry from the girl, into a deep and sunless water.
+
+They came up, spluttering and choking; but as soon as she could catch
+breath the girl laughed, whereupon the grimness of Grom's face
+relaxed. The water was a deep creek, perfectly overshadowed and hidden
+by the rank growth along its banks. But just opposite was the tree
+whose refuge they had been trying to gain. They swam across in
+half-a-dozen strokes, and drew themselves ashore, and shook themselves
+like a pair of retrievers. Through all the flight, the fierce effort
+among the grass-stems, and the unexpected ducking, they had kept
+tenacious hold of every one of their treasures. But--their fire was
+out! The brand was black; the precious tube, with the seeds of fire
+lurking at its heart, was drenched, saturated and lifeless.
+
+For a moment or two Grom looked into the girl's eyes steadily,
+conveying to her without a word the whole tremendous significance of
+their loss. The girl responded, after a second's dismay, with a look
+of trust and adoration which brought a rush of warmth to Grom'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 plumed
+tops of the grasses.
+
+The sight that met their eyes was not one for weak nerves. The spot in
+the grass which they had just escaped from was a shambles. The
+foremost of the panic-stricken pig-tapirs, met by the charge of the
+rhinoceros, had been ripped and split by the rooting of his double
+horn, and hurled to either side as if by some titanic plough. A couple
+more had been trampled down and crushed before his charge was stayed
+by 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 the
+herd passed on, either scrambling clean over him or breaking down the
+canes and pouring around on either side. Of those that passed over him
+about one in every three or four got ripped by the tossing horn, and
+went staggering forward a few paces, only to fall and be trodden out
+by their fellows. Close behind the last of the squealing fugitives
+came the cause of their panic--two immense black lions, who had
+apparently been playing with their prey like cats.
+
+When they came face to face with the rhinoceros where he stood among
+his victims, shaking the blood from horn and head and shoulder, they
+stopped abruptly. Together, perhaps, they would have been a match for
+him. But theirs was a far higher intelligence than his. They knew the
+almost impenetrable toughness of his hide, his Berserk rage, his
+imperviousness to reasonable fear; and they had no care to engage
+themselves without cause in so uncertain and unprofitable a combat.
+
+With a roar that rolled in thunder over the plain and seemed to set
+the very tree-tops quivering, they leaped lazily aside and went off in
+enormous bounds through the grass, circling about as if to intercept,
+in sheer wantonness of slaughter, the remnants of the fleeing herd. At
+the sight Grom frowned anxiously, thinking how helpless he and the
+girl would be against such foes, now that they no longer had the
+Shining One to protect them.
+
+Squealing to split the ears, the pig-tapirs came galloping past the
+tree, making for a piece of water some furlongs further on, where
+doubtless they hoped to evade both the lion and the rhinoceros. But
+they had yet another adversary to reckon with.
+
+Just past the tree, at a thicket of immense scarlet poinsettias, the
+trail curved sharply. From behind the poinsettias arose a gigantic
+shape unlike anything that Grom had ever dreamed of. And he knew that
+the maker of the mysterious trail and those tremendous footprints was
+before him.
+
+With a trumpeting bray of indignation the monster sat upright on
+hind-quarters far more ponderous than those of a mammoth. Its tail, as
+thick at the base as the body of a bear, helped to support it, while
+its clumsy frame towered to a height of eighteen or twenty feet. Its
+hind legs were very short, thick like tree-trunks, grotesquely bowed;
+and its thighs like buttresses. Its fore legs were more arms than
+legs, of startling length and massive strength, draped in long, stiff
+hair, and terminated by colossal hands with immense hooked claws for
+fingers. The whole body was clothed with rusty hair of an amazing
+coarseness, like matting fiber. The vast head, flat on top and
+prolonged to a snout that was almost a proboscis, had the look of
+being deformed by reason of its fantastically exaggerated jowl, or
+lower jaw. This terrifying monster thrust out a narrow pink tongue,
+some three or four feet in length, stooped and turned, and gave a
+hurried look at something crouching behind its mighty thighs.
+
+"Its baby!" muttered the girl, with a little indrawn breath of
+sympathy.
+
+Then the strange being sat up again to meet and ward off the rush of
+the maddened pig-tapirs.
+
+For a moment it beat off the assault, seizing the frantic beasts and
+hurling them this way and that as if they had been so many rabbits.
+Then it was completely surrounded by the reeking squealing bleeding
+horde, which paid no more personal attention to it than if it had been
+a mass of rock. They rolled over the little one, unheeding, and trod
+it flat. Its death cry split the air; and at that sound the mother
+seemed to sink down into her haunches. In her agony of rage and grief
+she literally tore some of her assailants in halves, throwing the
+awful fragments impatiently from her in order to lose no time in
+seizing a new victim. A few seconds more and the rush was past; and
+presently the mad rout was hurling itself with a tremendous splashing
+into the water. The monster looked around for more victims--and was
+just in time to see the hideous vision of the rhinoceros charging down
+upon her. Triumphant from the encounter with the lions, he rushed back
+to slake his still unsatisfied fury on the pig-tapirs. At any other
+time he would have given such an antagonist as the colossal
+megatherium a wide berth; but just now he was in one of his madnesses.
+His furious little swinish eyes blinking through the blood which
+dripped over them, he hurled himself straight onward. His horn was
+plunged into the monster's paunch; but at the same time one of those
+gigantic armed hands fell irresistibly on his neck, shattering the
+vertebrae through all their deep protection of hide and muscle. He
+collapsed with an explosive grunt; and the giant hands tossed him
+aside.
+
+It was a frightful wound which the monster had received, but for a few
+moments she paid no attention to it, being occupied in licking the
+trampled body of her young one with that amazing tongue of hers. At
+length, apparently convinced that the little one was quite dead, she
+brayed again piteously, dropping forward upon all fours, and made off
+slowly down the trail, walking with grotesque awkwardness on the sides
+of her feet. For two or three hundred yards she kept on, drawing a
+wake of crimson behind her; and then, apparently exhausted by her
+wound, she turned off among the canes, and lay down, close beside the
+trail, but effectively screened from it.
+
+From their place in the tree Grom and the girl had followed
+breathlessly these astounding encounters. At last Grom spoke:
+
+"This is a country of very great beasts," he remarked, with the air of
+one announcing a discovery. As A-ya showed no inclination whatever to
+dissent 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 to
+go on without him."
+
+"Yes," agreed the girl eagerly. For all her courage and passionate
+trust in her man, the sight of those black lions bounding over the
+tops of the towering grasses had somewhat shaken her nerve. She feared
+no beasts but the swiftest, and those which might leap into the lower
+branches of the trees. "Yes!" she repeated. "Let us go back for the
+Shining 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 and
+sleep in safety," continued Grom, "that we may travel the more
+swiftly, till we get beyond the grasses."
+
+Then, climbing higher into the tree, he proceeded to build a platform
+and roof of interlaced branches for their temporary home. In this task
+the girl did not help him, because of the great muscular strength
+which it required. She lay in a crotch, her hairy but long and shapely
+legs coiled under her like a leopard's, now gazing at her man with
+ardent eyes, now staring out apprehensively across the sun-drenched,
+perilous landscape.
+
+Suddenly she gave a cry of amazement, and pointed excitedly down the
+trail. 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, Grom made out that they were
+nearly exhausted. They were clearly men of the type of his own tribe,
+light-skinned and well shaped; and the leader, who carried a long
+club, was a man of stature equal to his own. Grom's sympathies went
+out to them, and his impulse was to hasten to their assistance.
+Glancing further along the trail to learn the cause of their headlong
+flight, he saw two black lions in pursuit, probably the same two which
+had been driving the pig-tapirs a couple of hours earlier. They were
+coming on at such a pace that Grom feared the weary fugitives would be
+overtaken before they could reach the tree of refuge. Instinctively he
+started to climb down. But, his eyes falling upon the girl, he
+remembered that he had no right to enter upon a venture so utterly
+hopeless while he had her to take care of. His eager clutch upon his
+spear 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's
+Mawg, and his two cousins."
+
+Grom growled an exclamation of astonishment. The girl's eyes--or her
+intuitions--were keener than his. But he saw at a second glance that
+she was right.
+
+At this moment Mawg, running a few paces in advance by reason of his
+superior speed and stamina, passed the spot where the wounded
+megatherium lay hidden. The monster lifted her dreadful head. The next
+second the other two arrived, running elbow to elbow, with drooped
+shoulders of exhaustion. Through the screen of canes a gigantic hand
+shot out above their heads and came down upon them, crushing the two
+together. They had not time for outcry; but it was clear that some
+sound 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 see
+his face change with horror. He ran on without a pause, but now with
+fresh speed, as if the sight had shocked him into new vigor. Seeing
+that there was, after all, a good prospect of his reaching the tree in
+time, Grom swung down to be ready to help him up. As he did so he saw
+the two lions approach the hiding-place of the monster.
+
+The vast, clawed hand still lay there on the two crushed bodies in the
+middle of the trail. The lions saw it, and they checked themselves at
+a safe distance. They knew that just behind the grass-screen lurked
+another such shaggy and monstrous member, waiting to rend them as they
+would rend an antelope. They shrank, and drew back, snarling angrily.
+It is possible they feared lest the screen on either side of the trail
+might conceal more than one of the monsters; for they sprang far aside
+as if to make a wide circuit of the perilous spot.
+
+"There's plenty of time!" muttered Grom, and dropped upon his feet in
+the middle of the trail. The girl came in mad haste after him, but at
+his sharp command "Stay there!" she contented herself with slipping
+out upon the lowest branch, just over his head, and holding her spear
+ready.
+
+"Kill him!" she cried. But Grom seemed not to hear.
+
+Staggering, and half blind with exhaustion Mawg was within twenty
+paces before he noticed who was confronting him. Then his dull eyes
+blazed. With a snarl of fury he hurled his club straight at Grom's
+face, missing him only by a hand's-breadth. But the effort, and the
+disappointment at finding himself thus balked, as he imagined, on the
+very threshold of escape, seemed to finish him. He stumbled on with
+groping hands outstretched, and fell just at Grom's feet.
+
+Grom hesitated, wondering how he could get this inert weight up into
+the tree. The girl did not understand his hesitation.
+
+"Kill him!" she hissed, leaning down eagerly from her branch
+overhead.
+
+"No, he's a great warrior, and the tribe needs him," answered Grom,
+stooping to shake the prostrate form.
+
+Mawg stirred, beginning to recover. Grom shook him again.
+
+"Up into the tree, quick!" he ordered in a loud, sharp voice. "The
+lions are coming."
+
+Mawg roused himself, sat up, and stared with a look of bewilderment
+changing swiftly into hate.
+
+"Up!" shouted Grom again. "The tree. They're coming!"
+
+At this the fellow growled, but sprang up as if he had been jabbed
+with a spear, and clambered into the tree as nimbly as a monkey. Grom
+followed, quickly but coolly. A-ya, who had waited with her eyes
+watchfully on Mawg, stepped close to Grom's side; and all three swung
+upwards into the higher branches as the two lions arrived beneath.
+
+Glaring up into the tree with shrewd, malevolent eyes, the great
+beasts realized that, for the present at least, the tree man-creatures
+were quite out of reach. Lashing their tufted tails in disappointment,
+they turned aside to sniff, in surly scorn, at the dead, mountainous
+hulk of the rhinoceros, which lay with one ponderous foot stuck up in
+the air as if in clumsy protest at Fate. Comprehending readily the
+manner of its death, they came back and lay down under the tree, and
+fell to gnawing lazily at the body of one of the pig-tapirs which the
+megatherium had torn in two. They had the air of intending to stay
+some time, so Grom presently turned his attention to his rescued
+rival.
+
+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.
+Grom knit his brows, and significantly passed an arm about the girl's
+shoulders. 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 Grom.
+
+Mawg stared with a stupid brutality and incomprehension; and the eyes
+of the two men, meeting fairly, seemed to lock in a duel of
+personalities.
+
+They presented a significant contrast. Both, physically, superb
+specimens of their race--the highest then evolved upon the youthful
+earth--the elder man, in his ample forehead and calm, reasoning eyes,
+displayed all the promise of the future; while the youth, low skulled
+and with his dull but pugnacious eyes set under enormous bony brows,
+suggested the mere brute from which the race had mounted. His hair was
+shorter and coarser than Grom's, and foully matted; and his neck was
+set very far forward between his powerful but lumpy shoulders. The
+color of his coarse and furrowed skin was so dark as to make the
+weathered tan of Grom and A-ya look white by contrast.
+
+In no way lacking courage, but failing in will and steadiness, in a
+dozen seconds Mawg involuntarily shifted his gaze, and looked down at
+the lions.
+
+"What do you want of me?" he demanded again, as if he had had no
+answer before.
+
+"The tribe has too few warriors left. I will take you back to the
+tribe!" replied Grom with authority.
+
+Mawg curled back his thick lips from his great yellow dog-teeth in a
+snarling laugh of incredulity.
+
+"You want to kill me!" said he, nodding his head.
+
+Grom stared at him for a moment or two with a look of fatigued
+contempt, then tore off a substantial strip of dried flesh from the
+bundle hanging on the branch, and tossed it to him. The fellow
+snatched it, and hid it behind him, being too hungry to refuse it,
+but too savage to eat it under his captor's eye. Grom smiled
+slowly, and fell to playing with a heavy strand of A-ya's hair
+which had fallen over his arm. But to this caress the girl paid no
+attention. She was puzzled and outraged at Grom's action in protecting
+his rival. Her nostrils dilated, and a red spot glowed angrily under
+each cheek-bone.
+
+Suddenly from down the trail came a noise of cracking grass-stems. The
+two lions got up from their meal, and turned their heads inquiringly
+toward the sound. The next moment they went stalking off the opposite
+way with an air of haughty indignation, ignoring all the bodies of the
+slain pig-tapirs. When they had rounded the first turn in the trail
+they leaped into the grass, and went bounding off in a straight line
+toward a large patch of wood some miles distant. The wounded
+megatherium was returning.
+
+Perhaps stung into restlessness by the anguish of that rending thrust,
+the monster came dragging herself back toward the tree, crawling on
+the sides of her feet. Arriving at the scene of battle, she sniffed
+once more at her mangled young one, and brayed piteously over it. Then
+turning in an explosive fury upon the body of the rhinoceros, began to
+tear it limb from limb as one might pull apart a roast pigeon. While
+thus occupied, she chanced to turn her eyes upon the tree, and caught
+sight of the three figures looking down upon her.
+
+On the instant her rage was diverted to them. Braying like a steam
+siren, she came under the tree, reared herself against it, flung her
+giant arms about it, and strove to pull it down. The tree rocked as if
+struck by a tornado; and Mawg, who had been too slow to notice what
+was about to happen, gave a yell of horror as he barely saved himself
+from falling. The girl laughed, whereupon he shot her a menacing look
+which 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 on
+Mawg. Finding the tree quite too sturdy to be pulled down off-hand,
+the monster gripped the lowest main branch, a limb eight or ten inches
+through, and with one wrench peeled it down like a stalk of celery.
+Her first effort, upon the main trunk, had set the blood once more
+pumping from her wound, but she paid no attention to it. Reaching to
+the next great branch, she ripped that one down also, taking another
+great strip from the main trunk. Grom saw that her purpose obviously
+was to pull the tree to pieces bit by bit, in order to get at her
+intended victims. Mawg apparently saw this also, and it was too much
+for him. Gripping his strip of dried meat between his teeth, he
+slipped around the trunk till he was sheltered from the monster's
+sight, dropped to a branch which stretched far over the water, ran out
+along it nimbly as an ape, and dived. The monster, her eyes fixed upon
+the two remaining in the tree, never noticed his escape. Mawg swam the
+creek, thrust his way through the grass-stems, darted back to snatch
+up his club, shook it at Grom, and, yelling an obscene taunt, raced
+off to seek himself another retreat before nightfall.
+
+Neither Grom nor A-ya had any heed to spare him at that moment. The
+monster had just torn down a limb so huge that the main trunk was
+almost split in half by its loss. Grom saw that unless he could stop
+this process of destruction, in a few moments more the tree would be
+overthrown. The monster was just rearing herself to clutch the next
+great bough. Spear in hand, Grom slipped down to meet her, and halted
+on a branch just out of reach. The monster brayed vindictively,
+stretched to her full height, and then shot forth her tremendous
+muscular red coil of tongue, thinking evidently to lick down her
+insignificant adversary from his perch. She was within an inch of
+succeeding. Grom just eluded the strange attack by stepping aside
+nimbly; and quick as thought A-ya's spear slashed the dreadful red
+tongue as it reached flickering after her lord's ankles. The next
+moment, seeing the monster's throat upstretched and unguarded, Grom
+drove his spear full force, straight into the soft hollow of it. The
+weapon sank into a depth of perhaps three feet, till the ragged flint
+lodged in the vertebrae of the monster's neck. Then the shaft was
+wrenched violently from his hand; and the monster, blowing blood and
+foam from mouth and nostrils, fell with a crash among the litter of
+great branches which she had pulled down.
+
+Grom drew a deep breath of relief, and commended the girl for her
+timely and effective stroke at that terrible tongue. Then he set
+himself coolly to the task of completing their shelter for the night.
+As he wove leafy branches into the floor of the platform to make it
+soft, she contemplated his work with satisfaction. Presently he
+remarked:
+
+"I'm glad we are rid of that Mawg."
+
+"You should have killed him!" said the girl curtly.
+
+"But why?" demanded Grom, in some surprise. In his eyes the fellow was
+a valuable piece of property belonging to the tribe, a fighting
+asset.
+
+"He wants _me_!" answered the girl, meeting his eyes resentfully.
+
+Grom let his eyes roam all over her--face, hair and form--and such a
+look of passionate admiration glowed in their steady depths that her
+anger faded, her own eyes dropped, and her breast gave a happy,
+incomprehensible flutter. She had never seen such a look in any man's
+face before, or even dreamed of such a look as possible.
+
+"Of course, he wants you," said Grom, wondering, as he spoke, at the
+ring of his own voice. "You are the fairest thing, and the most
+desirable, on earth. All men whose eyes come to rest on you must want
+you. But none shall have you, ever, for you are mine, and none shall
+tear you from me."
+
+And at that the girl forgot her anger, and forgave him for having
+neglected to kill Mawg.
+
+That night sleep was impossible for them, though their lofty shelter
+was comfortable and secure. A vast orange moon, near the full,
+illuminated the spacious landscape; and beneath the tree came all the
+giant night-prowlers, gathering to the unparallelled banquet which the
+day had spread for them. Only the two black lions, perhaps already
+glutted, did not come. Wolves, a small pack of self-disciplined wild
+dogs, a troop of hyenas, and several enormous leopards, howled,
+snarled and wrangled in knots over the widely scattered carcases, each
+group watching its neighbors with suspicion and deadly animosity.
+
+A gigantic red bear came lumbering up, and all the lesser prowlers
+scattered discreetly but resentfully before him. He strode straight to
+the chief place, under the rent, dishevelled tree, and fell to tearing
+at the mountainous corpse of the megatherium. He was undisturbed till
+two 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 ground
+scornfully; but before the two he thought it best to defer. Slowly,
+and with a thunderous grumbling, he moved over to the body of the
+rhinoceros, pretending that he preferred it. The air was split and
+battered with the clamor of raving voices. Other saber-tooths came,
+and then another bear.
+
+There were swift, sudden battles, as swiftly dropped because
+neither combatant wished to fight to a finish when there was
+feasting so abundant for all. And once a leopard, dodging the paw
+of a saber-tooth, sprang into the tree, only to fall back howling
+from the spears thrust at him through the floor of Grom's platform.
+
+Just before dawn the girl slept, while Grom kept watch beside her lest
+another leopard should fancy to explore their refuge. An hour later,
+when the first pallor was spreading, she awoke with a cry of fear, and
+clung to Grom's arm, shuddering strongly.
+
+"But--what is it?" he asked, in a tender voice, stroking her heavy
+mane.
+
+"I was afraid!" she answered, like a child.
+
+"What were you afraid of?" asked Grom.
+
+"I was afraid of Mawg. I _am_ afraid of him!" she answered, sitting up
+and shaking the hair from her eyes, and staring out fearfully over the
+gray transparent plains.
+
+"Why should you fear Mawg?" demanded Grom proudly. "Am not I your man?
+And am not I always with you? Many such mad brutes as Mawg could not
+take you from me."
+
+"I know," answered the girl, "that he and such as he would be as
+straws in my lord's hands. But--even Grom must sometimes sleep!"
+
+Grom laughed gently at her forebodings.
+
+"He must sleep now, indeed, for we have a long and perilous journey
+before us," said he. Laying his great shaggy head in her lap, and
+stretching his limbs as far as the tiny platform would allow he was
+asleep in two seconds. The girl, stooping forward till her rich hair
+shadowed the rugged, sleeping face, with its calm brows, pondered
+deeply over his inexplicable forbearance toward his rival. Her
+instincts all assured her that it was dangerous; but something else
+within her, something which she strove in vain to grasp, suggested to
+her that in some way it was noble, and made her glad of it. Then, all
+at once, the first of the sunrise, flooding into the tree-top, bathed
+her 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 the
+Valley of Fire. They had prospered exceedingly. The caves were
+swarming with strong children; for at the Chief's orders every warrior
+had taken to himself either two or three wives, so that none of the
+widows had been left unmated. Grom alone remained with but one wife,
+although his position in the tribe, second only to that of Bawr
+himself, would have entitled him to as many as he might choose.
+
+Singularly happy with the girl A-ya, Grom had been unwilling to
+receive other women into their little grotto, which branched off from
+the high arched entrance of the main cave. He might, however, have
+yielded, from policy and for the sake of the tribe, to pressure from
+the Chief, but for a look of startled anguish which he had seen leap
+into A-ya's eyes when he mentioned the matter to her. This had
+surprised him at the moment, but it had also thrilled him curiously.
+And as the girl made no objection to a step so absolutely in
+accordance with the tribal customs, Grom thought about it a good deal.
+A few days later he excused himself to the Chief, saying that other
+women in his cave would be a nuisance, and would interfere with those
+studies of the Shining One which had proved so beneficial to the
+tribe. Bawr had accepted the excuse, though somewhat perplexed by it,
+and had accommodatingly taken the extra wives himself--a solution
+which 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 the
+tribe, 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 any
+power 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-mouths
+lavishly with dry fuel from the stores which Grom's forethought had
+caused to be accumulated under shelter. These contests between fire
+and rain were sagaciously represented by Bawr (who had by now to his
+authority as Chief added the subtle sanctions of High Priest) as the
+fight of the Shining One in protection of the tribe, his children.
+
+On more than one occasion of torrential downpour the struggle had
+almost seemed to hang for a while in doubt. But the Shining One lost
+no prestige, thereby, for always, down there across the valley-mouth,
+kept leaping and dancing those unquenchable flames of scarlet, amber
+and violet, fed by the volcanic gases from within the crevice, and
+utterly regardless of whatever floods the sky might loose upon them.
+This was evidence conclusive that the Shining One was master of the
+storm, no less than of the monsters which fled so terror-stricken
+before him.
+
+In the early spring, the girl A-ya bore a child to Grom; a big-limbed,
+vigorous boy, with shapely head and spacious brow. In this event, and
+in the mother's happiness about it (a happiness that seemed to the
+rest of the women to savor of foolish extravagance), Grom felt a
+gladness which dignity forbade him to betray.
+
+But pondering over the little one with bent brows, and with deep eyes
+full of visions, he conceived such an ambition as had perhaps never
+before entered into the heart of man. It was that this child might
+grow up to achieve some wonderful thing, as he himself had done, for
+the advancement of his people. Of this baby, child of the woman toward
+whom he felt emotions so new and so profound, he had a premonition
+that new and incalculable things would come.
+
+One day Grom was following the trail of a deer some distance up the
+valley. Skilled hunter that he was, he could read in the trail that
+his quarry was not far ahead, and also that it had not yet taken
+alarm. 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 a
+twenty-foot gap to the next hoofprints, and these went off at right
+angles to the direction which the quarry had hitherto been pursuing.
+Grom halted abruptly, slipped behind a tree, crouched, and peered
+about him with the tense vigilance of a startled fox. He knew that
+something had frightened the deer, and frightened it badly. It
+behooved him to find out what that something was.
+
+For some minutes he stood motionless as the trunk against which he
+leant, searching every bush and thicket with his keen gaze, and
+sniffing the air with expert nostrils. There was nothing perceptible
+to explain that sudden fright of the deer. He was on the point of
+slipping around the trunk to investigate from another angle. But stop!
+There on a patch of soil where some bear had been grubbing for tubers
+he detected a strange footprint. Instantly, he sank to the ground, and
+wormed his way over, silently as a snake, to examine it.
+
+It was a human footprint, but much larger than his own, or those of
+his tribe; and Grom's beard, and the stiff hairs on the nape of his
+corded 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, which
+was low and flat. The pressure was very marked along all the outer
+edge, as if the author of the print had walked on the outer sides of
+his feet. To Grom, who was an adept in the signs of the trail, it
+needed no second look to be informed that one of the Bow-legs had been
+here. And the trail was not five minutes old.
+
+Grom slipped under the nearest bushes, and writhed forward with
+amazing speed in the direction indicated by the strange footprint,
+pausing every other second to look, sniff the air, and listen. The
+trail was as clear as daylight to him. Suddenly he heard voices,
+several of them, guttural and squealing, and stopped again as if
+turned to stone. Then another voice, at which he started in amazement.
+It was Mawg's, speaking quietly and confidentially. Mawg, then, had
+gone over to the Bow-legs! Grom's forehead wrinkled. A-ya had been
+right. He ought to have killed the traitor. He writhed himself into a
+dense covert, and presently, over the broken brink of a vine-draped
+ledge, 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, and
+gaping, pit-like, upturned nostrils to their wide, bridgeless noses.
+Grom's own nose wrinkled in disgust as the sour taint of them breathed
+up to him.
+
+They were all armed with spears and stone-headed clubs, such as their
+people had been unacquainted with up to the time of their attack upon
+the Tribe of the Little Hills. It was apparent to Grom that the
+renegade Mawg, who towered among them arrogantly, had been teaching
+them what he knew of effective weapons.
+
+Having no remotest comprehension of the language of the Bow-legs--which
+Mawg was speaking with them--Grom could get little clue to the drift of
+their talk. They gesticulated frequently toward the east, and then
+again toward the caves at the valley-mouth, so Grom guessed readily
+enough that they were planning something against his people.
+
+It was clear, also, that this was but a little scouting party which
+the renegade had led in to spy upon the weakness of the tribe. This
+was as far as he could premise with any certainty. The obvious
+conclusion was that these spies would return to their own country, to
+lead back such an invasion as should blot the Children of the Shining
+One out of existence.
+
+Grom was quick to realize that to listen any longer was to waste
+invaluable time. All that it was possible for him to learn, he had
+learned. Writhing softly back till he had gained what he considered a
+safe distance from the spies, he rose to his feet and ran, at first
+noiselessly, and crouching as he went, then at the top of that speed
+for which he was famous in the tribe. Reaching the Caves, he laid the
+matter hurriedly before the Chief, and within five minutes they were
+leading a dozen warriors up the trail.
+
+Besides their customary weapons, both Grom and the Chief carried
+fire-sticks, tubes of thick, green bark, tied round with a raw hide,
+filled with smouldering punk, and perforated with a number of holes
+toward the upper end. This was one of Grom's inventions, of proved
+efficacy against saber-tooth and bear. By cramming a handful of dry
+fiber and twigs into the mouth of the tube, and then whirling it
+around his head, he was able to obtain a sudden and most unexpected
+burst of flame which no beast ever dared to face, and which never
+failed to compel the awe and wonder of his followers.
+
+Like shadows the little band went gliding in single file through the
+thickets and under the drooping branches, their passage marked only by
+the occasional upspringing of a startled bird or the frightened
+crashing flight of some timorous beast surprised by their swift and
+noiseless approach. Arriving near the hollow under the ledge, they
+sank flat and wormed their way forward like weasels till they had
+gained the post of observation behind the vine-clad rock.
+
+But the strangers had vanished. An examination of their footprints
+showed that they had fled in haste; and to Grom's chagrin it looked as
+if he had himself given them the alarm. The problem was solved in a
+few minutes by the discovery that Mawg--easily detected by his finer
+footprints--had scaled the ledge and come upon the place where Grom
+had lain hidden to watch them. Seeing that they were discovered, and
+that their discoverer had evidently gone to arouse the tribe, they had
+realized that, the Bow-legs being slow runners, their only hope lay in
+instant flight. From the direction which they had taken it was evident
+that they were fleeing back to their own country.
+
+The Chief ordered instant pursuit. To this Grom demurred, not only
+because the fugitives had obtained such a start--as was shown by the
+state of the trail--but because he dreaded to leave the Caves so long
+unguarded. He foresaw the possibility of another band of invaders
+surprising the Caves during the absence of this most efficient
+fighting force. But the Chief overruled him.
+
+For several hours was the pursuit kept up; and from the trail it
+appeared, not only that Mawg was leading his followers cleverly, but
+also that the Bow-legs were making no mean speed. The pursuers were
+come by now to near the head of the valley, a region with which they
+were little familiar. It was a broken country and well fitted for
+ambuscade, where a lesser force, well posted and driven to bay, might
+well secure a deadly advantage. The tribe was too weak to risk its few
+fighting men in any uncertain contest; and the Chief, yielding slowly
+to Grom's arguments, was on the point of giving the order to turn
+back, when a harsh scream of terror from just ahead, beyond a shoulder
+of rock, brought the line to a halt.
+
+Waving their followers into concealment on either side of the trail,
+the Chief and Grom stole forward and peered cautiously around the
+turn.
+
+Straight before them fell away a steep and rugged slope. Midway of the
+descent, 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 of
+leopards. The man was kneeling upon one knee, with the other leg
+trailed awkwardly behind him. It seemed an altogether difficult and
+disadvantageous 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 Grom. And straightway, a novel
+purpose flashing into his far-seeing brain, he ran leaping down the
+slope to the rescue, waving his fire-stick to a blaze as he went.
+
+The Chief looked puzzled for a moment, wondering why the deliberate
+Grom should trouble to do what it was plain the leopards would do for
+him most effectually. But he dreaded the chance of an ambuscade.
+Shouting to the men behind to come on, he waved his own fire-stick to
+a blaze, and followed Grom.
+
+One of the leopards had already succeeded in closing in upon the
+wounded Bow-leg; but at the sight of Grom and the Chief leaping down
+upon them they sprang back snarling and scurried off among the
+thickets like frightened cats. The Bow-leg lifted wild eyes to learn
+the meaning of his deliverance. But when he saw those two tall forms
+rushing at him with flame and smoke circling about their heads, he
+gave a groan and fell forward upon his face.
+
+Grom stood over him, staring down upon the misshapen and bleeding form
+with thoughtful eyes; while the Chief looked on, striving to fathom
+his purpose. The warriors came up, shouting savage delight at having
+at last got one of their dreaded enemies into their hands alive. They
+would have fallen upon him at once and torn him to pieces. But Grom
+waved them back sternly. They growled with indignation, and one,
+sufficiently prominent in the tribal counsels to dare Grom's
+displeasure, protested hotly against this favor to so venomous a foe.
+
+"I demand this fellow, Bawr, as my captive!" said Grom.
+
+"It was you who took him," answered the Chief. "He is yours." He was
+about to add, "though I can't see what you want of him"; but it was a
+part of his policy never to seem in doubt or ignorance about anything
+that another might perhaps know. So, instead, he sternly told his
+followers to obey the law of the tribe and respect Grom's capture.
+Then Grom stepped close beside him and said at his ear: "Many things
+which we need to know will Bawr learn from this fellow presently, as
+to the dangers which are like to come upon us."
+
+At this the Chief, being ready of wit, comprehended Grom's purpose;
+and, to the amazement of his followers, he looked down upon the
+hideous prisoner with a smile of satisfaction.
+
+"Well have I called you the Chief's Right Hand," he answered. "I shall
+also have to call you the Chief's Wisdom, for in saving this fellow's
+life you have shown more forethought than I."
+
+The captive's wounds having been dressed with astringent herbs, and
+his broken leg put into splints in accordance with the rude but not
+ineffective surgery of the time, he was placed on a rough litter of
+interlaced branches and carried back by the reluctant warriors to the
+Caves.
+
+None of the warriors were advanced enough to have understood the
+policy of their leaders, so no effort was made by either the Chief or
+Grom to explain it. The Chief, doubly secure in his dominance by
+reason of Grom's loyal support, cared little whether his followers
+were content or not, and he took no heed of their ill-humor so long as
+they did not allow it to become articulate.
+
+But when, after an hour's sullen tramping, they suddenly grew merry at
+their task, and fell to marching with a child-like cheer under their
+repulsive and groaning burden, he was surprised, and made inquiry as
+to the reason for this sudden complaisance. It turned out that one of
+the warriors, accounted more discerning than his fellows, had
+suggested that the captive was to be nursed back to health in order
+that he might be made an acceptable sacrifice to the Shining One. As
+this notion seemed to meet with such hearty approval, the wise Chief
+did not think it worth while to cast any doubt upon it. In fact, as he
+thought, such a solution might very well arrive, in the end, in case
+Grom'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 Grom had
+explained his purpose to her, and the imminence of the peril that
+threatened, she yielded readily enough, the dread of Mawg being yet
+vivid in her imagination. She lent herself cheerfully to the duty of
+caring for the captive's wounds and of helping Grom to teach him the
+simple speech of the tribe.
+
+As for the captive, for some days he was possessed by a morose
+anticipation of being brained at any moment--an anticipation, however,
+which did not seem to interfere with his appetite. He would clutch
+eagerly all the food offered him, and crouch, huddled over it, with
+his face to the rock-wall, while he devoured it with frantic haste and
+bestial noises. But as he found himself treated with invariable
+kindness, he began to develop an anxious gratitude and docility. On
+A-ya's tall form his little round eyes, shy and fierce at the same
+time, came to rest with an adoring awe. The smell of him being
+extremely offensive to all this cleanly tribe, and especially to A-ya
+and Grom, who were more fastidious than their fellows, A-ya had taken
+advantage of her office as priestess of the Shining One to establish a
+little fire within the precincts of her own dwelling, and by the
+judicious use of aromatic barks upon the blaze she was able to scent
+the place to her taste. And the Bow-leg, seeing her mastery of the
+mysterious and dreadful scarlet tongues which licked upwards from the
+hollow on their rocky pedestal, regarded her less as a woman than as a
+goddess--a being who, for her own unknown reasons, chose to be
+beneficent toward him, but who plainly could become destructive if he
+should in any way transgress. Toward Grom--who regarded him altogether
+impersonally as a means to an end, a pawn to be played prudently in a
+game of vast import--his attitude was that of the submitted slave, his
+fate lying in the hollow of his master's hand. Toward the rest of the
+tribe--who, till their curiosity was sated, kept crowding in to stare
+and jeer and curse--he displayed the savage fear and hate of a lynx at
+bay.
+
+But the babe on A-ya's arm seemed to him something peculiarly
+precious. It was not only the son of Grom, his grave and distant
+master, but also of that wonderful, beautiful, enigmatic deity, his
+mistress, the fashioner and controller of the flames. The adoration
+which soon grew up in his heart for A-ya's beauty, but which his awe
+of her did not suffer him even to realize to himself, was turned upon
+the babe, and speedily took the form of a passionate and dog-like
+devotion. A-ya, with her mother instinct, was quick to understand
+this, and also to realize the possible value to her child of such a
+devotion, in some future emergency. Moreover, it softened her heart
+toward the hideous captive, so that she busied herself not only to
+help Grom teach him their language, but also to reform his manners and
+make him somewhat less unpleasant an associate. His wounds soon
+healed, thanks to the vitality of his youthful stock; and the bones of
+the broken leg soon knit themselves securely. But Grom's surgery
+having been hasty and something less than exact, the leg remained so
+crooked that its owner could do no more than hobble about with a
+laborious, 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 to
+remove himself from the neighborhood of A-ya's baby. He was like a
+gigantic watchdog squatting at Grom's doorway, chained to it by links
+stronger than any that hands could fashion. And those of the tribe who
+had been hoping to do honor to the Shining One, as well as to the
+spirits of their slain kinsmen back in the barrow on the windy hills,
+by a great and bloody sacrifice, began to realize with discontent that
+their hopes were like enough to be disappointed.
+
+
+II
+
+The captive said his name was Ook-ootsk--a clicking guttural which
+none but A-ya was able to master. When he had learned to make himself
+understood, he proved eager to repay Grom's protection by giving all
+the information that he possessed. Simple-minded, but with much of a
+child's shrewdness, he quickly came to regard himself as of some
+importance when both the Chief and Grom would spend hours in
+interrogating him. His own people he repudiated with bitterness,
+because, when he had fallen among the rocks and shattered his leg, his
+party had refused to burden their flight by helping him. It became his
+pride to identify himself with the interests of his master, and to
+call himself the slave of his master's baby.
+
+The information which he was able to give was such as to cause the
+Chief and Grom the most profound disquietude. It appeared that the
+Bow-legs, having gradually recovered from the panic of their appalling
+defeat in the Pass of the Little Hills, had made up their minds that
+the disaster must be avenged. But no longer did they hold their
+opponents cheap on account of their scanty numbers. They realized that
+if 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 into
+their hands, instead of tearing them to pieces in bestial sport, they
+had spared them, and made much of them, and set themselves diligently
+to learn all that the strangers could teach. And Mawg, seeing here his
+opportunity both for vengeance on Grom and for the gratification of
+that mad passion for A-ya which had so long obsessed him, had gone
+about the business with shrewd foresight and a convincing zeal.
+
+It was apparent from the accounts which Ook-ootsk was able to give
+that the invasion would take place as soon as possible after their
+hordes were adequately armed with the new weapons. This, said
+Ook-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 the
+way from their country to the Valley of Fire lay through a region of
+swamps which became impassable for any large body of migrants during
+the month of rains.
+
+As the dry season was already close upon them, Bawr and Grom now set
+themselves feverishly to the arrangement of their defenses. Counting
+the older boys who had grown into sizable youths since the last great
+battle and all the able-bodied women and girls, they could muster no
+more than about six score of actual combatants. They knew that defeat
+would mean nothing less than instant annihilation for the tribe, and
+for the women a foul captivity and a loathsome mating. But they knew
+also that a mere successful defense would avail them only for the
+moment. Unless they could inflict upon the invaders such a defeat as
+would amount to a paralyzing catastrophe, they would soon be worn down
+by mere force of numbers, or starved to death in their caves. It was
+not only for defense, therefore, but for wholesale attack--the attack
+of six score upon as many thousand--that Bawr planned his strategy and
+Grom wove unheard-of devices.
+
+Of the two great caves occupied by the tribe one was now abandoned, as
+not lending itself easily to defense. To Bawr's battle-trained eyes it
+revealed itself as rather a trap than a refuge, because from the
+heights behind it an enemy could roll down rocks enough to effectively
+block its mouth. But the cliff in which the other cave was hollowed
+was practically inaccessible, and hung beetling far over the
+entrance.
+
+Into this natural fortress the tribe--with an infinite deal of
+grumbling--was removed. Store of roots and dried flesh was gathered
+within; and every one was set to the collection of dry and half-dry fuel.
+The light stuff, with an immense number of short, highly-inflammable
+faggots, was piled inside the doorway where no rain could reach it. And
+the heavy wood was stacked outside, to right and left, in such a fashion
+as to form practical ramparts for the innermost line of defense.
+
+Directly in front of the cave spread a small fan-shaped plateau
+several hundred square yards in area. On the right a narrow path, wide
+enough for but one wayfarer at a time, descended between perpendicular
+boulders to the second cave. On the left the plateau was bordered by
+broken ground, a jumble of serrated rocks, to be traversed only with
+difficulty. In front there was a steep but shallow dip, from which the
+land sloped gently up the valley, clothed with high bush and deep
+thickets 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 the
+members of the little band appointed to this distinguished service by
+the Chief. Under the Chief's direction the whole of the plateau was
+now cleared of underbrush and grass, and then along its brink was laid
+a chain of small fires, some ten or twelve feet apart, and all ready
+for lighting.
+
+Meanwhile, Grom was busy preparing the device on which, according to
+his plan of campaign, the ultimate issue was to hang. For days the
+tribe was kept on the stretch collecting dry and leafy brushwood from
+the other side of the valley, and bundles of dead grass from the rich
+savannahs beyond the valley-mouth, on the other side of the dancing
+flames. All this inflammable stuff Grom distributed lavishly through
+the thickets before the plateau, to a distance of nearly a mile up the
+slope, till the whole space was in reality one vast bonfire laid ready
+for the torch.
+
+While these preparations were being rushed--somewhat to the perplexity
+of the tribe, who could not fathom the tactics of stuffing the
+landscape with rubbish--Bawr was keeping a little band of scouts on
+guard at the far-off head of the valley. They were chosen from the
+swift runners of the tribe; and Bawr, who was a far-seeing general,
+had them relieved twice in twenty-four hours, that they might not grow
+weary and fail in vigilance.
+
+When all was ready came a time of trying suspense. As day after day
+rolled by without event, cloudless and hot, the country became as dry
+as tinder; and the tribe, seeing that nothing unusual happened, began
+to doubt or to forget the danger that hung over them. There were
+murmurs over the strain of ceaseless watching, murmurs which Bawr
+suppressed with small ceremony. But the lame Ook-ootsk, squatting
+misshapen in Grom's doorway with A-ya's baby in his ape-like arms grew
+more and more anxious. As he conveyed to Grom, the longer the delay
+the greater the force which was being gathered for the assault.
+
+Having no inkling of Grom's larger designs, he looked with distrust on
+the little heaps of wood that were to be fires along the edge of the
+plateau, and wished them to be piled much bigger, intimating that his
+people, though they would be terribly afraid of the Shining One, would
+be forced on from behind by sheer numbers and would trample the small
+fires out. The confidence of the Chief and Grom, and of A-ya as well,
+in the face of the awful peril which hung over them, filled him with
+amazement.
+
+Then, at last, one evening just in the dying flush of the sunset, came
+the scouts, running breathlessly, and one with a ragged spear-wound in
+his shoulder. Their eyes were wide as they told of the countless
+myriads 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 Grom, "as they who came against us in the
+Little 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 this
+appalling news.
+
+"It is well," said he. Mounting a rock by the cave-door, he gazed up
+the valley, striving to make out the vanguard of the approaching
+hordes; while Grom, marshalling the servitors of the fire, stationed
+them by the range of piles, ready to set light to them on the given
+word.
+
+It was nearly an hour--so swift had been the terror of the scouts--before
+a low, terrible sound of crashings and mutterings announced that the hordes
+were drawing near. It was now twilight, with the first stars appearing in
+a pallid violet sky; and up the valley could be discerned an obscurely
+rolling confusion among the thickets. Bawr gave orders, rapid and concise;
+and the combatants lined out in a double rank along the front of the
+plateau some three or four paces behind the piles of wood.
+
+They were armed with stone-headed clubs, large or small, according to
+personal taste, and each carried at least three flint-tipped spears.
+At the head of the narrow path leading up from the lower cave were
+stationed half a dozen women, similarly armed. Bawr had chosen these
+women because each of them had one or more young children in the cave
+behind her; and he knew that no adventurous foe would get up that path
+alive. But A-ya was not among these six wild mothers, for her place
+was at the service of the fires.
+
+The ominous roar and that obscure confusion rolled swiftly nearer, and
+Bawr, with a swing of his huge club, sprang down from his post of
+observation and strode to the front. Grom shouted an order, and light
+was set to all the crescent of fires. They flared up briskly; and at
+the same time the big central fire, which had been allowed to sink to
+a heap of glowing coals, was heaped with dry stuff which sent up an
+instant column of flame. The sudden wide illumination, shed some
+hundreds of yards up the valley, revealed the front ranks of the
+Bow-legs swarming in the brush, their hideous yellow faces, gaping
+nostrils 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 low
+muttering rose to a chorus of harsh cries. Then the tall figure of
+Mawg sprang to the front, followed, after a moment of wondering
+hesitation, by that of the head chief of the hordes, a massive
+creature of the true Bow-leg type, but as tall as Bawr himself, and in
+color almost black. This giant and Mawg, refusing to be awed by the
+tremendous phenomenon of the fire, went leaping along the lines of
+their followers, urging them forward, and pointing out that their
+enemies stood close beside the flames and took no hurt.
+
+On the front ranks themselves this reasoning seemed, at first, to
+produce little effect. But to those just behind it appeared more
+cogent, seconded as it was by a consuming curiosity. Moreover, the
+masses in the rear were rolling down, and their pressure presently
+became irresistible. All at once the front ranks realized that they
+had no choice in the matter. They sagged forward, surged obstinately
+back again, then gave like a bursting dam and poured, yelling and
+leaping, straight onward toward the crescent of fires.
+
+As soon as the rush was fairly begun, both Mawg and the Black Chief
+cleverly extricated themselves from it, running aside to the higher,
+broken ground at the left of the plateau whence they could see and
+direct the attack. It was plain enough that they accounted the front
+ranks doomed, and were depending on sheer weight of numbers for the
+inevitable victory.
+
+Standing grim, silent, immovable between their fires, the Chief and
+Grom awaited the dreadful onset. In all the tribe not a voice was
+raised, not a fighter, man or woman, quailed. But many hearts stood
+still, for it looked as if that living flood could never be stayed.
+Presently from all along its front came a cloud of spears. But they
+fell short, not more than half a dozen reaching the edge of the
+plateau. 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 clean
+home in the packed ranks of the foe, but they caused no more than a
+second's wavering, as the dead went down and their fellows crowded on
+straight over them. A second volley from the grimly silent fighters on
+the plateau had somewhat more effect. Driven low, and at shorter
+range, every jagged flint-point found its mark, and the screaming
+victims hampered those behind. But after a moment the mad flood came
+on again, till it was within some thirty paces of the edge of the
+plateau.
+
+Then came a long shout from Grom, a signal which had been anxiously
+awaited by the front line of his fighters. Each fire had been laid, on
+the inner side, with dry faggots of a resinous wood which not only
+blazed freely but held the flame tenaciously. These faggots had been
+placed with only their tips in the fire. Seizing them by their
+unlighted ends, the warriors hurled them, blazing, full into the
+gaping faces before them.
+
+The brutal, gaping faces screeched with pain and terror, and the whole
+front rank, beating frantically at the strange missiles, wheeled about
+and clawed at the rank behind, battling to force its way through. But
+the rolling masses were not to be denied. After a brief, terrible
+struggle, the would-be fugitives were borne down and trodden
+underfoot. The new-comers were greeted with a second discharge of the
+blazing brands, and the dreadful scene repeated itself. But now there
+was a difference. For many of the assailants, realizing that there was
+no 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 the
+right center and of Grom far to the left, many of the blazing brands
+had been thrown, not into the faces of the front rank, but far over
+their heads, to fall among the tinder-dry brushwood. Long tongues of
+flame leaped up at once, here, there, everywhere, curling and licking
+savagely. Screeches of horror arose, which brought all the hordes to a
+halt as far back as they could be heard. A light wind was blowing up
+the valley, and almost at once the scattered flames, gathering volume,
+came together with a roar. The hordes, smitten with the blindest
+madness of panic, turned to flee, springing upon and tearing at each
+other in the desperate struggle to escape.
+
+Shouting triumph and derision, the defenders bounded forward, down
+over the edge of the plateau, and fell upon the huddled ranks before
+them. But these, with all escape cut off, and far outnumbering their
+exultant adversaries, now fought like rats in a pit. And the men of
+the caves found themselves locked in a struggle to the death just when
+they had thought the fight was done.
+
+A-ya, no longer needed at the fires, was just about to follow Grom
+down into the thick of the reeking battle, when a scream from the
+cave-mouth made her whip round. She was just in time to see Ook-ootsk
+hurl his spear at the tall figure of Mawg, leaping down upon him from
+the broken slope on the left. A half score of the Bow-legs were
+following hard upon Mawg's heels. With a scream of warning to Grom she
+rushed back to the cave. But Grom did not hear her. He had been pulled
+down, struck senseless and buried under a writhing heap of foes.
+
+Her long hair streaming behind her, her eyes like those of a tigress
+protecting her cubs, A-ya darted to the cave-door. But she did not
+reach it. Just outside the threshold a club descended upon her head,
+and she dropped. Instantly she was pounced upon, and bound. A moment
+later three Bow-legs, followed by Mawg, streaming with blood, came
+running out of the cave. Mawg swung the limp form across his shoulder
+with a grin of satisfaction, and the party beat a hurried retreat up
+the slopes.
+
+In a few minutes that last death-grapple along the front of the
+plateau came to an end, and Bawr, leaving nearly a third of his
+followers slain with the slain Bow-legs, led the exultant survivors
+back to the cave. It had been a costly victory for the Children of
+the Shining One; but for the invaders it was little less than
+annihilation. The flames were raging for a mile up the valley,
+wherever they were not choked by the piles and windrows of the dead
+or dying Bow-legs. The lurid night was shaken with the incessant
+rising and falling chorus of shrieks, and far off under the glare
+rolled that awful receding wave of fugitives, with the flames
+leaping upon them and slaying them as they fled. Leaning upon his
+club and gazing thoughtfully across the scene of incredible
+destruction, Bawr told himself that never again, so long as the
+memory of this night survived, would the Bow-legs dare to come
+against 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 swift
+incursion of Mawg, and that nearly all the old men and women had been
+slaughtered in defending their charges. Across Grom's doorway,
+crouching on his face and with his great teeth buried in the throat of
+a dead Bow-leg, lay the lame captive, Ook-ootsk. Seeing that he still
+breathed, and marking the fury with which he had fought in defense of
+their little ones, the warriors lifted him aside gently. Beneath him,
+and safely guarded in the crook of his shaggy arm, they found Grom's
+baby, without a hurt. The women defending the head of the path on the
+right having seen the rape of A-ya, Bawr handed the babe to one of his
+own wives to cherish.
+
+Then search was made for Grom. At first the Chief imagined that he had
+followed the captors of A-ya, in a desperate hope of effecting her
+rescue alone. But they found him under a heap of dead, so nearly dead
+himself that they despaired of him. Realizing that it was he who had
+saved the tribe, they began over him that great keening lamentation
+hitherto reserved strictly for the funeral of the supreme Chief
+himself. But Bawr, his massive features furrowed with solicitude,
+stopped them, vowing that Grom should not die. And lifting the hero in
+his arms he bore him into the cave.
+
+Grom's wounds proved to be deep, but not fatal to one of these
+clean-blooded sons of the open and the wind. It was some days before
+it was clearly borne in upon him that A-ya had been carried off alive
+by the Bow-legs. Then, with a great cry, he sprang to his feet. The
+blood 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, and
+it looked as if he would die, not of his wounds so much as of the
+insufficient will to live. But a chance word of the captive Ook-ootsk,
+who was being nursed back to life beside him, reminded him that there
+was vengeance to be lived for, and he roused himself a little. Then
+Bawr, ever subtle in the reading of his people's hearts, suggested to
+him that even such a feat as the rescue of the girl A-ya might not be
+impossible to the subjugator of the fire and the slayer of a whole
+people.
+
+And from that moment Grom 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 the
+world--perhaps a half-score thousand years or so--since their
+ancestors, in the pride of their dawning intelligence, had swung down
+from their tree-tops, to walk upright on the solid earth and challenge
+the supremacy of the hunting beasts. Their arms were still of an
+unhuman and ungainly length, their short powerful legs were still so
+heavily bowed that they had no great speed in running; and they still
+had their homes high among the branches, where they could sleep secure
+from surprise. They were still tree dwellers; but they were men,
+intent upon asserting their lordship over all the other dwellers upon
+earth'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, were
+covered unevenly with a thin growth of dark hairs. On thigh and
+shoulder, down the backbone, and on the outer side of the long
+forearm, this growth was heavier and longer, forming a sort of
+irregular thatch; while the hair of their heads was jet black, and
+matted into a filthy tangle with grease and clay. Their faces were
+broad and flat, with powerful protruding jaws, low and very receding
+foreheads, and wide noses which seemed to have been punched in at the
+bridge so that the flaring red nostrils turned upwards hideously.
+
+It was but a battered and crestfallen remnant of the tribe which now
+took counsel over their diminished fortunes. In an irregular
+half-circle they squatted, pawing gingerly at their wounds or
+scratching themselves uncouthly, while their apish women loitered in
+chattering groups outside the circle, or crouched in the branches of
+the neighboring trees. Those who were perched in the trees mostly held
+babies at their breasts, and were therefore instinctively distrustful
+of the dangerous ground-levels. Here and there on the outskirts of the
+crowd, either squatting on hillocks or clinging in a tree-top,
+wary-eyed old women kept watch against surprise; though there were few
+among either beasts or men who would be likely to venture an attack
+upon 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 (which
+was merely the root end of a sapling hacked into shape with sharp
+stones), as if it had been a bulrush. In height and bulk he was far
+above his fellows, though similar to them in general type except for
+the matter of color, which was dark almost to blackness. His jaws were
+those of a beast, and his whole appearance was bestial beyond that of
+any other in the whole hideous throng--except for his eyes. These,
+though small and deep-set, blazed with fierce intelligence, and swept
+his audience with an air of assured mastery which made plain why he
+was chief. He was talking rapidly, with broad gestures, and in a
+barking, clicking speech which sounded little more than half
+articulate. He was working himself up into a rage; and the squatting
+listeners wriggled apprehensively, while they applauded from time to
+time with grunts and growls.
+
+Near the end of the foremost rank of the semi-circle, very close to
+the haranguing Chief, sat one who was plainly of superior race to his
+companions. Something in the harangue seemed to concern him
+particularly, for he sprang to his feet and stood leaning on his
+club--which was longer and more symmetrically fashioned than that of
+the chief. In color he was manifestly white, for all that dirt and
+the weather could do to disguise it. He was taller even than the great
+Black Chief himself--but shorter in the body, and achieving his
+height through length and straightness of leg. He had chest and
+shoulders of enormous power; but, unlike the barrel-shaped Bow-legs
+he was comparatively slim of waist and hips. He had less hair on
+the body--except on the chest and forearm--than his companions;
+but far more on the head, where it stood out all around like an
+immense 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, and
+now, deep under their shaggy brows, glared upon the Chief with
+desperate defiance. Close behind his heels crouched a girl,
+obviously of his own race--a tall, strong, shapely figure of a
+woman, as could well be seen, though her attitude was one of utter
+dejection, her face sunk upon her knees, and half her body hidden
+in the tangled torrent of her dull chestnut hair.
+
+The tall alien, so dauntlessly eyeing the Chief, was Mawg the
+renegade. Arrogant in his folly, he had not realized that the Tree Men
+would hold him to account for the calamity which he had brought upon
+them. He had not realized that the girl A-ya, with her straight limbs
+and her strong comeliness, might stir the craving of others besides
+himself. Now, as he listened to the fierce harangue of the Chief, as
+his alert ears caught the mutterings behind and about him, he saw the
+pit yawn suddenly at his feet. But though a brute and a traitor, he
+was no coward. His veins began to run hot, his sinews to stretch for
+the death struggle which would presently be upon him.
+
+As for the girl, unseeing, unhearing, her head bowed between her naked
+knees, she cared nothing. She loathed life, and all about her,
+equally. Her baby and her lord, if they yet lived, were far away
+beyond the mountains and the swamps, in the caverned hillside behind
+the smoke of the fires. Her captor, Mawg, she loathed above all; but
+she was here behind him because he held her always within reach lest
+the filthy women of the Bow-legs should tear her to pieces.
+
+Suddenly, without looking around, Mawg spoke to her, in their own
+tongue, which the Bow-legs could not understand. "Be ready, girl. They
+are going to kill me now. The Black Chief wants you. But I kill him
+and we run. They are all dirt. _Come!_"
+
+On the word, he sprang straight at the great Black Chief, where he
+towered 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, though
+slow 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 club
+was almost beaten from his grasp. He dropped it with a snarl and
+leaped at his assailant's throat with clutching hands.
+
+Had it been possible to fight it out man to man, Mawg would have liked
+nothing better, though the issue would have been a doubtful one. But
+he had no mind to face the whole tribe, which was now surging forward
+like a pack of wolves. He had no time to repeat his blow fairly; but
+as he eluded the gigantic, clutching fingers he got in a light
+glancing stroke with the butt which laid open his adversary's cheek
+and closed one furious little eye. At the same instant he whirled away
+lithely, sprang from the rock on the further side, and ran off like a
+deer through the trees, cursing the girl because she had not followed
+him. About half the tribe went trailing after him, yelling hoarsely,
+while the rest drew back and waited uneasily to see what their Chief
+would do.
+
+The Chief, clapping one hairy hand over his wounded eye, glared after
+the fugitive with the other. But he knew the folly of trying to catch
+his fleet-footed adversary, and after a moment he dismissed him from
+his mind. With a grunt he stepped down from his rock, and heedless of
+his wound, strode over to the girl. Through all the tumult she had
+never lifted her head from between her knees, or shown the least sign
+of concern. The Chief seized her by the shoulder and shook her
+roughly, ordering her to come with him. She did not understand his
+language, but his meaning was obvious. She looked up and stared
+straight 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 point
+of 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, and
+horrible with his gashed face and the blood pouring down over his huge
+and shaggy chest, he was all a man, and the mastery in him checked
+her. She felt the hopelessness of fighting her fate. The flame
+flickered out, leaving her eyes dull and leaden. She rose listlessly,
+and followed her new lord to the tree in which he had his dwelling of
+woven branches.
+
+At the foot of the tree the Black Chief stopped, stood back, and
+signed the girl to ascend. A climber as expert as himself, she
+clutched the rough trunk with accustomed hands. Then she hesitated,
+and shut her eyes. Should she obey, yielding to her fate? Mawg, her
+late captor, she had hated with a murderous hate; yet she had
+submitted to him, in a dim way biding her time for vengeance. He was
+of her own race; and it was in her mind, her spirit--though she
+herself could not so analyze the emotion--that she hated him. But this
+new master was an alien, and of a lower, beastlier type. Toward him
+she felt a sick bodily repulsion. Behind her tight-shut lids the dark
+went red. She stood rigid and quivering, stormed through by a raging
+impulse to tear out either his throat or her own. She was herself a
+more advanced product of her own advanced race, and urged by impulses
+still new and imperfectly applied to life. But the countless centuries
+of submission were in her blood also; and they whispered to her
+insidiously that she was lawful prey. A huge hand fell significantly
+upon the back of her neck. She jumped, gave a sobbing cry, and sprang
+up into the tree. Who was she to challenge doom for an idea, a hundred
+thousand years before her time.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some days' journey to the westward of the swampy refuge of the
+Bow-legs, a tall hunter was making his way warily through the forest.
+His color, his build, and his swift grace of movement proclaimed him
+of the same race as Mawg and the girl A-ya, acquitting him easily of
+any kinship with the People of the Trees. In height and weight he was
+much like Mawg, but lighter in complexion, somewhat less hairy, and of
+a frank, sagacious countenance. His eyes were of a blue-gray, calm and
+piercing, 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 in
+one hand a peculiar long-handled club, which he had fashioned by
+lashing, with strips of green hide, a split and jagged flint-stone
+into 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 Grom set out from the Caves
+behind the Fire to seek for A-ya in the far-off country of the
+Bow-legs, he had carried also two hollow tubes of green bark, with the
+seeds of fire, kept smouldering in a bed of punk, hidden in the hearts
+of them. But the need of stopping frequently to build a fire and renew
+the vitality of the secret spark had soon exasperated his impatient
+spirit. Intolerant of the hindrance, and confident in his own strength
+and craft, he had thrown the fire-tubes away and fallen back upon the
+weapons which had sufficed him before his discovery and conquest of
+the Shining One.
+
+Engrossed in his purpose, thinking only of regaining possession of the
+girl, the mother of his man-child, he shunned all contest with the
+great beasts which crossed his path, and fled without shame from those
+which undertook to hunt him.
+
+He would risk no doubtful battle. He satisfied his hunger on wild
+honey, and the ripe fruits and tubers with which the forest abounded
+at this season. At night he made his nest, of hurriedly woven
+branches, in the highest swaying of the tree-tops, where not even the
+leopard, cunning climber though she was, could come at him without
+giving timely warning. And so, doggedly and swiftly making his way due
+east, he came at length to the fringes of that vast region of swampy
+meres and fruitful, rankly wooded islets which was occupied by the
+Bow-legs.
+
+Here he had need of all that wood-craft which had so often enabled him
+to stalk even the wary antelope. The light color of his skin being a
+betrayal, he rubbed himself with clayey ooze till he was of the same
+hue as the Bow-legs. Crawling through the undergrowth at dusk as
+soundlessly as a snake, or swinging along smoothly through the
+branches like a gray ape in the first confusing glimmer of the dawn,
+he made short incursions among the outlying colonies, but could find
+no sign of the girl, or Mawg, in whose hands he imagined her still to
+be. But working warily around the outskirts of the tribe, to
+northward, he came at last upon the stale but unmistakable trail of a
+flight and a pursuit. This he followed up till the pursuit came
+stragglingly to an end, and the trail of the fugitive stood out alone
+and distinct. One clear footprint in the wet earth revealed itself
+clearly as Mawg's--for there was no such thing as confounding that
+arched and moulded imprint with those left by the apish men.
+Feverishly the hunter cast about for another trail, smaller and
+slimmer. Forward he searched for it, and then back among the trampings
+of the pursuers. But in vain. Clearly Mawg had been the sole
+fugitive.
+
+Grom sat down in sudden despair. If Mawg, who at least was no coward,
+had fled alone, then surely the girl was dead. Grom's club and his
+spears dropped from his nerveless hands. His interest in life sank
+into a sick indifference, a dull anguish which he did not even try to
+understand. It was well for him that no prowling beast came by in that
+moment of his unseeing weakness. Then a new thought came to him, and
+his despair flamed into rage. He leapt to his feet, clutching at his
+shaggy beard. The girl had been seized, without doubt, by the great
+Black Chief. The thought of this defilement to his woman, the mother
+of his man-child, drove him quite mad for the moment. Snatching up his
+weapons, he roared with anguish, and ran blindly forward along the
+trampled trail, ready to hurl himself upon the whole loathsome tribe.
+A gigantic leopard, crouching in a thicket of scarlet poinsettia
+beside the trail, made as if to pounce upon him as he went by--but
+shrank back, instead, with flattened ears, daunted by his fury.
+
+But presently the madness burned itself out. As sanity returned he
+checked his rush, glanced once more watchfully about him, and at
+length stepped furtively into the thick of the jungle. Now more than
+ever was his coolest craft demanded, that A-ya might be plucked from
+the monster's arms.
+
+Following up the plain clue of that tremendous pursuit, Grom worked
+his way deep into the Bow-legs' country. With all his craft and his
+lynx-like stealth, it was at times hair-raising work. Not only the
+ground thickets, but the tree-tops as well, were swarming with his
+keen-eyed foes. He had to worm his way between swamp-sodden roots, and
+sometimes lie moveless as a stone for hours, enduring the stings of a
+million insects. Sometimes, not daring to lift his head to look about
+him, he had to trust to his ears and his hound-like sense of smell for
+information as to what was going on. And sometimes it was only his
+tireless immobility that saved him from the stroke of a startled adder
+or a questioning and indignant crotalus. After long swaying, poised
+for the death-stroke, the serpent would decide that the menacing thing
+before it was not alive. It would slowly dissolve its tense coils, and
+glide away; and Grom would resume his shadowy progress.
+
+Then, about sunrise (for the Bow-legs, like the birds, were early
+risers) 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 a
+hundred yards or so of the Council Rock, which was surrounded by a
+horde of the Bow-legs. Crouching low as he was, in a dense thicket,
+Grom's view was limited; but he could see, over the heads of the
+listening mob, the Black Chief seated on the rock, his ragged club in
+his hand. He was haranguing his warriors in rapid clicks and
+gutturals, which conveyed no meaning to Grom's ear. The harangue came
+soon to an end. The Chief stood up. The bestial crowd parted--and
+through the opening Grom saw A-ya, crouched, with her hair over her
+knees, at the Chief's feet. Stepping down from the rock, the Chief
+seized her by the wrist and dragged her upright. She took her place at
+his heels, dejectedly, like a whipped dog. Grom, from within his
+thicket, 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 Grom, from
+his hiding-place could not at first make out. Then he saw that the
+Chief was trying to instruct his powerful but clumsy followers in the
+handling of the club and spear. Having been taught by the white
+renegade, Mawg, the Chief used his massive club with skill, but he was
+still clumsy and absurdly inaccurate in throwing the spear. After he
+had split the face of one of his followers by a misdirected cast, he
+gave up the spear-throwing, turned to the girl, and ordered her to
+teach this art of her people. It was obvious that the mob had vast
+confidence in her powers, as one of superior race, although a mere
+woman, for they opened out at once on two sides to leave room for the
+expected display. The heart of the watcher in the thicket began to
+thump as he saw a way clearing itself between his hiding-place and the
+wild-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 her
+angrily, but she paid no attention. At this moment the whistling cry
+of a plover sounded from the thicket. The girl straightened herself
+and every muscle grew tense. The melancholy cry came again. It was a
+strange 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 toward
+the thicket, but suddenly, smilingly, she seemed to understand the
+orders of the Chief. Poising the rude spear at the height of her
+shoulder, she pointed to a huge, whitish fungus which grew upon a
+tree-root some sixty or seventy feet away. With a flexing of her whole
+lithe body--as Grom had taught her--she made her throw. The white
+fungus was split in halves.
+
+With a hoarse clamor of admiration, the mob surged forward to examine
+the fragments. Even the Chief, though disdaining to show the interest
+of his followers, took a stride or two in the same direction. For a
+second his back was turned. In that second, the girl fled, light and
+swift as a deer, speeding toward the thicket whence the cry of the
+plover had sounded. Her long bushy hair streamed out behind her as she
+ran.
+
+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 leapt
+Grom, a towering figure, and stood with spear uplifted. Like a lion at
+bay, he glanced swiftly this way and that, balancing the chances of
+battle and escape, while he menaced the foes immediately confronting
+him.
+
+At this amazing apparition, the mob paused irresolute; but the Black
+Chief came on like a mad buffalo. Grom 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 flung
+himself forward on his face. The weapon hurtled on viciously, and
+pierced the squat body of one of the waverers a dozen paces behind. At
+his yell of agony the mob woke up, and came on again with guttural,
+barking cries. But already Grom and the girl, side by side, were
+fleeing down an open glade to the left, toward a breadth of still
+water which they saw gleaming through the trunks. Grom knew that the
+way behind him was swarming with the enemy. He had seen that there was
+no chance of getting through the hordes in front and to the right. But
+in this direction there were only a few knots of shaggy women, who
+shrank in terror at his approach; and he gambled on the chance of the
+bow-legged men having no great skill in the water.
+
+All the Folk of the Caves could swim like otters, and both Grom and
+the girl were expert beyond their fellows. The water before them was
+some three or four hundred yards in width. They did not know whether
+it was a sluggish fenland river, or the arm of a lake; but, heedless
+of the peril of crocodiles and water-snakes they plunged in, and with
+long powerful side-strokes went surging across toward the opposite
+shore. They had a clear start of thirty or forty yards, and their pace
+in the water was tremendous. Some heavy splashes in the water behind
+them showed how the clumsy missiles of their foes--ragged clubs and
+fragments of broken branches--were falling short; and they looked back
+derisively.
+
+The bow-legged, shaggy men with their wide, red, skyward nostrils were
+ranged along the shore, and the Chief was fiercely urging them into
+the water. They shrank back in horror at the prospect--which, indeed,
+seemed little to the taste of the Chief himself. Presently he seized
+the two nearest by their matted manes, and flung them headlong in.
+With yells of terror they scrambled out again, and scurried off to the
+rear like half-drowned hens.
+
+The Chief screeched an order. Straightway the mob divided. One part
+went racing clumsily up the shore to the left, the other followed the
+Chief along through the rank sedge-growth to the right--the Chief, by
+reason of his superior stature and length of leg, rapidly opening up
+his lead.
+
+"It's nothing but a pond," said Grom, in disgust, "and they're coming
+round the shore to head us off."
+
+But the girl, her hair trailing darkly on the water behind her, only
+laughed. She was free at last. And she was with her man.
+
+Suddenly Grom felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the calf of his leg. With
+a cry, he looked back, expecting to see a water-snake gliding off. He
+saw nothing. But in the next instant another stab came in the other
+leg. Then A-ya screamed: "They're biting me all over." A dozen
+stinging punctures distributed themselves all at once over Grom's
+body. Then he understood that their assailants were not water-snakes.
+
+"Quick! To shore!" he ordered. Throwing all their strength into a
+breath-sapping, over-hand roll, they shot forward, gained the weedy
+shallows, and scrambled ashore. Their bodies were hung thickly with
+gigantic leeches.
+
+Heedless of the wounds and the drench of blood, they tore off their
+loathsome assailants. Then, after a few seconds' halt to regain breath
+and decide on their direction, they started northwestward at a rapid,
+swinging lope, through a region of open, grassy glades set with
+thickets of giant fern and mimosa.
+
+They had run on at this free pace for a matter of half-an-hour or
+more, and were beginning to flatter themselves that they had shaken
+off their pursuers, when almost directly ahead of them, to the right,
+appeared the Black Chief, lumbering down upon them. Nearly half-a-mile
+behind, between the mimosa clumps, could be seen the mob of his
+followers straggling up to his support. He yelled a furious challenge,
+swung up his great club, and charged upon Grom. Waving A-ya behind
+him, Grom strode forward, accepting the challenge.
+
+As man to man, the rivals looked not unfairly matched. The fair-skinned
+Man of the Caves was the taller by half a head, but obviously the
+lighter in weight by a full stone, if not more. His long, straight,
+powerfully muscled legs had not the massive strength of his bow-legged
+adversary's. He was even slim, by comparison, in hip and waist. But
+in chest, arms and shoulders his development was finer. Physically,
+it seemed a matter of the lion against the bear.
+
+To Grom there was one thing almost as vital, in that moment, as the
+rescue of his woman. This was the slaking of his lust of hate against
+the filthy beast-man who had held that woman captive. Fading ancestral
+instincts flamed into new life within him. His impulse was to fling
+down spear and club, to fall upon his rival with bare, throttling
+hands and rending teeth. But his will, and his realization of all that
+hung upon the outcome, held this madness in check.
+
+Silent and motionless, poised lightly and gathered as if for a spring,
+Grom waited till his adversary was within some thirty paces of him.
+Then, with deadly force and sure aim, he hurled his one remaining
+spear. But he had not counted on the lightning accuracy, swifter than
+thought 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, Grom, still voiceless
+and noiseless, was upon him.
+
+Had the vicious swing of Grom's flint-headed club found its mark, the
+battle 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 stroke
+whistled idly over him, and in the next second he swung a vicious,
+short blow upwards. It was well-aimed, at the small of Grom's back.
+But the latter, feeling himself over-balanced by his own ineffective
+violence, leapt far out of reach before turning to see what had
+happened. The Chief recovered himself, and the two lashed out at each
+other so exactly together that the great clubs met in mid-air. So
+shattering was the force of the impact, so numbing the shock to the
+hairy wrists behind it, that both weapons dropped to the ground.
+
+Neither antagonist dared stoop to snatch them up. For several seconds
+they stood glaring at each other, their breath hissing through
+clenched teeth, their knotted fingers opening and shutting. Then they
+sprang at each other's throats--Grom in silence, the Black Chief
+snarling hoarsely. Neither, however, gained the fatal grip at which he
+aimed. They found themselves in a fair clinch, and stood swaying,
+straining, sweating, and grunting, so equally matched in sheer
+strength that to A-ya, standing breathless with suspense, the dreadful
+seconds seemed to drag themselves out to hours. Then Grom, amazed to
+find 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 grunt
+of triumph the Black Chief crashed down upon him, only to find himself
+clutched by the legs and hurled clean over his wily adversary's head.
+Before he could recover himself, Grom was upon him, pinning him to the
+earth and reaching for his throat. In desperation he set his huge ape
+teeth, with the grip of a bull-dog, deep into the muscular base of
+Grom's neck, and began working his way in toward the artery.
+
+At this moment A-ya glanced about her. She saw two bodies of the
+Bow-legs closing in upon them from either side--the nearest not much
+more than a couple of hundred yards distant. Her lord had plainly
+ordered her to stand aside from this combat, but this was no time for
+obedience. She snatched up the sharpened fragment of the broken spear.
+Gripping it with both hands she drove it with all her force into the
+side of the Black Chief's throat, and left it there. With a hideous
+cough his grip relaxed. His limbs straightened out stiffly, and he lay
+quivering.
+
+Covered with blood, Grom sprang to his feet, and turned angrily upon
+A-ya. "_I_ would have killed him," he said, coldly.
+
+"There was no time," answered the girl, and pointed to the advancing
+hordes.
+
+Without a word Grom snatched up his club, wrenched the broken spear
+from his dead rival's neck, thrust it into the girl's hands, and
+darted for the narrowing space of open between the two converging
+mobs.
+
+With their greatly superior speed it was obvious that the two
+fugitives might reasonably expect to win through. They were surprised,
+therefore, at the note of triumph in the furious cries of the
+Bow-legs. A few hundred yards ahead the comparatively open country
+came to an end, and its place was taken by a belt of splendid crimson
+bloom, extending to right and left as far as the eye could see. It was
+a jungle of shrubs some twenty feet high, with scanty, pale-green
+leaves almost hidden by their exuberance of blossom. But jungle though
+it was, Grom's sagacious eyes decided that it was by no means dense
+enough to seriously hinder their flight. When they reached it, the
+jabbering hordes were almost upon them. But, with mocking laughter,
+they slipped through, and plunged in among the gray stems, beneath the
+overshadowed rosy glow. Their pursuers yelled wildly--it seemed to
+Grom a yell of exultation--but they halted abruptly at the edge of the
+rosy barrier and made no attempt to follow.
+
+"They know they can't catch us," said Grom, slackening his pace. But
+the girl, puzzled by this sudden stopping of the pursuit, felt uneasy
+and made no reply.
+
+Loping onward at moderate pace through the enchanting pink light,
+which filtered down about them through the massed bloom overhead, they
+presently became conscious of an oppressive silence. The cries of
+their pursuers having died away behind them, there was now nothing but
+the soft thud of their own footfalls to relieve the anxious intentness
+of their ears. Not a bird-note, not the flutter of a wing, not the hum
+or the darting of a single insect, disturbed the strangely heavy air.
+No snake or lizard or squeaking mouse scurried among the fallen
+leaves. They wondered greatly at such stillness. Then they wondered at
+the absence of small undergrowth, the lack of other shrubs and trees
+such as were wont to grow together in the warm jungle. Nothing
+anywhere about them but the endless gray stems and pallid slim leaves
+of the oleander, with their rose-red roof of blossom.
+
+Presently they felt a lethargy creeping over their limbs, which began
+to grow heavy; and a dull pain came throbbing behind their eyes. Then
+understanding of those cries of triumph flashed into Grom's mind. He
+stopped and clutched the girl by the wrist. "It is poison here. It is
+death," he muttered. "That's why they shouted."
+
+"Yes, everything is dead but the red flowers," whispered A-ya, and
+clung to him, shuddering with awe.
+
+"Courage!" cried Grom, lifting his head and dashing his great hand
+across his eyes. "We _must_ get through. We _must_ find air."
+
+Shaking off the deadly sloth, they ran on again at full speed, peering
+through the stems in every direction. The effort made their brains
+throb fiercely. And still there was nothing before them and about them
+but the endless succession of slender gray stems and the downpour of
+that sinister rosy light. At last A-ya's steps began to lag, as if she
+were growing sleepy.
+
+"Wake up!" shouted Grom, and dragged so fiercely at her arm that she
+cried out. But the pain aroused her to a new effort. She sprang
+forward, sobbing. The next moment, she was jerked violently to the
+left. "This way!" panted Grom, the sweat pouring down his livid face;
+and there, through the stems to the left, her dazed eyes perceived
+that the hated rosy glow was paling into the whiteness of the natural
+day.
+
+It was a big white rock, an island thrust up through the sea of
+treacherous bloom. With fumbling, nerveless fingers they scaled its
+bare sides, flung themselves down among the scant but wholesome
+herbage, which clothed its top, and filled their lungs with the clean,
+reviving air. Dimly they heard a blessed buzzing of insects, and
+several great flies, with barred wings, lit upon them and bit them
+sharply. They lay with closed eyes, while slowly the throbbing in
+their brains died away and strength flowed back into their unstrung
+limbs.
+
+Then, after perhaps an hour, Grom sat up and looked about him. On
+every side outspread the fatal flood of the rose-red oleanders,
+unbroken except toward the north-west. In that quarter, however, a
+spur of the giant forest, of growths too mighty to feel the spell of
+the envenomed blooms, was thrust deep into the crimson tide. Its tip
+came to within a couple of hundred yards of the rock. Having fully
+recovered, Grom and A-ya swung down, with loathing, into the pink
+gloom, fled through it almost without drawing breath, and found
+themselves once more in the rank green shadows of the jungle. They
+went on till they came to a thicket of plantains. Then, loading
+themselves with ripe fruit, they climbed high into a tree, and wove
+themselves a safe resting-place among the branches.
+
+For the next few days their journey was without adventure, save for
+the frequent eluding of the monsters of that teeming world. Grom had
+his club, A-ya her broken spear; but they were avoiding all combats in
+their haste to get back to their own country of the homely caves and
+the guardian watch-fires. At the approach of the great black lion or
+the saber-tooth, or the wantonly malignant rhinoceros, they betook
+themselves to the tree-tops, and continued their way by that aerial
+path as long as it served them. The most subtle of the beasts they
+knew they could outwit, and their own anxiety now was Mawg, whose
+craft and courage Grom could no longer hold in scorn. He was doubtless
+at large, and quite possibly on their trail, biding his time to catch
+them unawares. They never allowed themselves, therefore, to sleep both
+at the same time. One always kept on guard: and hence their progress,
+for all their eagerness, was slower than it would otherwise have
+been.
+
+On a certain day, after a long unbroken stretch of travel, A-ya rested
+and kept watch in a tree-top, while Grom went to fetch a bunch of
+plantains. It was fairly open country, a region of low herbage dotted
+with small groves and single trees; and the girl, herself securely
+hidden, could see in every direction. She could see Grom wandering
+from plantain clump to plantain clump, seeking fruit ripe enough to be
+palatable. And then, with a shiver of hate and dread, she saw the dark
+form of Mawg, creeping noiselessly on Grom's trail, and not more than
+a couple of hundred paces behind him. At the very moment when her eyes
+fell upon him, he dropped flat upon his face, and began worming his
+way soundlessly through the herbage.
+
+Her mouth opened wide to give the alarm. But the cry stopped in her
+throat, and a smile of bitter triumph spread over her face.
+
+If Mawg was hunting Grom, he was at the same time himself being
+hunted. 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 a
+swift but noiseless and curiously delicate stride. Its dark plumage
+was more like long, stringy hair than feathers. Its build was
+something like that of a gigantic cassowary, but its thighs and long
+blue shanks were proportionately more massive. Its neck was long, but
+immensely muscular to support the enormous head, which was larger than
+that of a horse, and armed with a huge, hooked, rending, vulture's
+beak. The apparent length of this terrible head was increased by a
+pointed crest of blood-red feathers, projecting straight back in a
+line with the fore-part of the skull and the beak.
+
+The crawling figure of Mawg was still a good hundred paces from the
+unsuspecting Grom, when the great bird overtook it. A-ya, watching
+from her tree-top, clutched a branch and held her breath. Mawg's ears
+caught a sound behind him, and he glanced around sharply. With a
+scream, he bounded to his feet. But it was too late. Before he could
+either strike or flee, he was beaten down again, with a smash of that
+pile-driving beak. The bird planted one huge foot on its victim's
+loins, gripped his head in its beak, and neatly snapped his neck. Then
+it fell greedily to its hideous meal.
+
+At Mawg's scream of terror, Grom had turned and rushed to the rescue,
+swinging his club. But before he had covered half the distance, he saw
+that the monster had done its work; and he hesitated. He was too late
+to help the victim. And he knew the mettle of this ferocious bird,
+almost as much to be dreaded, in single combat, as the saber-tooth
+itself. At his approach, the bird had lifted its dripping beak, half
+turned, and stood gripping the prey with one foot, swaying its grim
+head slowly and eyeing him with malevolent defiance. Still he
+hesitated, fingering his club; for the insolence of that challenging
+stare 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 scores
+cleanly wiped out together, and went back to gather his ripe
+plantains.
+
+The peril of Mawg being thus removed from their path, they journeyed
+more swiftly; and when the next new moon was a thin white sickle in
+the sky, just above the line of saw-toothed hills, they came safely
+back to the comfortable caves and the clear-burning watch-fires of
+their tribe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BENDING OF THE BOW
+
+
+Before the Caves of the Pointed Hills the fires of the tribe burned
+brightly. Within the caves reigned plenty and an unheard-of security;
+for since the conquest of fire those monstrous beasts and gigantic
+carnivorous, running birds, which had been Man's ceaseless menace ever
+since he swung down out of the tree-tops to walk the earth erect, had
+been held at a distance through awe of the licking flames. Though the
+great battle which had hurled back the invading hosts of the Bow-legs
+had cost the tribe more than half its warriors, the Caves were
+swarming with vigorous children. To Bawr, the Chief, and to Grom, his
+Right Hand and Councilor, the future of the tribe looked secure.
+
+So sharp had been the lessons lately administered to the prowling
+beasts--the terrible saber-tooth, the giant red bear of the caves, the
+proud black lion, and the bone-crushing cave hyena--that even the
+stretch of bumpy plain outside the circle of the fires, to a distance
+of several hundred paces, was considered a safe playground for the
+children of the tribe. On the outermost skirts of this playground, to
+be sure, just where the reedy pools and the dense bamboo thickets
+began, there was a fire kept burning. But this was more as a reminder
+than as an actual defense. When a bear or a saber-tooth had once had a
+blazing brand thrust in his face, he acquired a measure of discretion.
+Moreover, the activities of the tribe had driven all the game animals
+to some distance up the valley; and it was seldom that anything more
+formidable than a jackal or a civet-cat cared to come within a
+half-mile of the fires.
+
+It was now two years since the rescue of A-ya from her captivity among
+the Bow-legs. Her child by Grom was a straight-limbed, fair-skinned
+lad of somewhere between four and five years. She sat cross-legged
+near the sentinel fire, some fifty yards or so from the edge of the
+thickets, and played with the lad, whose eyes were alight with eager
+intelligence. Behind her sprawled, playing contentedly with its toes
+and sucking a banana, a fat brown flat-nosed baby of some fourteen or
+fifteen 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 green
+hide, something over three feet in length, to one end of a stick which
+was several inches longer. The uses of a whip came to him by unerring
+insight, and he began applying it to his mother's shoulders. The
+novelty of it delighted them both. A-ya, moreover, chuckled slyly at
+the thought that the procedure might, on some future occasion, be
+reversed, not without advantage to the cause of discipline.
+
+At last the lithe lash, so enthusiastically wielded, stung too hard
+for even A-ya, with all her stoicism, to find it amusing. She snatched
+the toy away and began playing with it herself. The lash, at its free
+end, chanced to be slit almost to the tip, forming a loop. The butt of
+the handle was formed by a jagged knot, where it had been broken from
+the parent stem. Idly but firmly, with her strong hands she bent the
+stick, and slipped the loop over the jagged knot, where it held.
+
+Interested, but with no hint of comprehension in her bright eyes, she
+looked upon the first bow--the stupendous product of a child and a
+woman playing.
+
+The child, displeased at this new, useless thing, and wanting his whip
+back, tried to snatch the bow from his mother's hands. But she pushed
+him off. She liked this new toy. It looked, somehow, as if it invited
+her to do something with it. Presently she pulled the cord, and let it
+go again. Tightly strung, it made a pleasant little humming sound.
+This she repeated many times, holding it up to her ear and laughing
+with pleasure. The boy grew interested thereupon, and wanted to try
+the new game for himself. But A-ya was too absorbed. She would not let
+him touch it. "Go get another stick," she commanded impatiently; but
+quite forgot to see her command obeyed.
+
+As she was twanging the strange implement which had so happily
+fashioned itself under her hands, Grom came up behind her. He stepped
+carefully over the sprawling brown baby. He was about to pull her
+heavy hair affectionately; but his eyes fell upon the thing in her
+hands, and he checked himself.
+
+For minute after minute he stood there motionless, watching and
+studying the new toy. His eyes narrowed, his brows drew themselves
+down broodingly. The thing seemed to him to suggest dim, cloudy, vast
+possibilities; and he groped in his brain for some hint of the nature
+of these possibilities. Yet as far as he could see it was good for
+nothing but to make a faintly pleasant twang for the amusement of
+women 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, and
+twanged it with redoubled vigor. Without further argument, and without
+violence, Grom reached out a long arm, and found the bow in his grasp.
+A-ya was surprised that such a trifle should seem of such importance
+in her lord's eyes; but her faith was great. She shook the wild mane
+of hair back from her face, silenced the boy's importunings with an
+imperative gesture, and gathered herself with her arms about both
+knees to watch what Grom would do with the plaything.
+
+First he examined it minutely, and then he fastened the thong more
+securely at either end. He twanged it as A-ya had done. He bent it to
+its limit and eased it slowly back again, studying the new force
+imprisoned in the changing curve. At last he asked who had made it.
+
+"I did," answered A-ya, very proud of her achievement now that she
+found it taken so seriously by one being to whom her adventurous
+spirit really deferred.
+
+"No, _I_ did!" piped the boy, with an injured air.
+
+The mother laughed indulgently. "Yes, he tied one end, and beat me
+with it," said she. "Then I took it from him, and bent the stick and
+tied the other end."
+
+"It is very good!" said Grom, nodding his approval musingly. He
+squatted down a few feet away, and began experimenting.
+
+Picking up a small stone, he held it upon the cord, bent the bow a
+little way, and let go. The stone flew up and hit him with amazing
+energy in the mouth.
+
+"_Oh!_" murmured A-ya, sympathetically, as the bright blood ran down
+his beard. But the child, thinking that his father had done it on
+purpose, laughed with hearty appreciation. Somewhat annoyed, Grom got
+up, moved a few paces farther away, and sat down again with his back
+to the family circle.
+
+As to the force that lurked in this slender little implement he was
+now fully satisfied. But he was not satisfied with the direction in
+which it exerted itself. He continued his experiments, but was careful
+to draw the bow lightly.
+
+For a long time he found it impossible to guess beforehand the
+direction which the pebbles, or the bits of stick or bark, would take
+in their surprising leaps from the loosed bow-string. But at length a
+dim idea of aim occurred to him. He lifted the bow--his left fist
+grasping its middle--to the level of his eyes, at arm's length. He got
+the cord accurately in the center of the pebble, and drew toward his
+nose. This effort was so successful that the stone went perfectly
+straight--and caught him fair on the thumb-knuckle.
+
+The blow was so sharp that he dropped the bow with an angry
+exclamation. Glancing quickly over his shoulder to see if A-ya had
+noticed the incident, he observed that her face was buried between her
+knees and quite hidden by her hair. But her shoulders were heaving
+spasmodically. He suspected that she was laughing at him; and for a
+moment, as his knuckle was aching fiercely, he considered the
+advisability of giving her a beating. He had never done such a thing
+to her, however, though all the other Cave Men, including Bawr
+himself, were wont to beat their women on occasion. In his heart he
+hated the idea of hurting her; and it would hardly be worth while to
+beat her without hurting her. The idea, therefore, was promptly
+dismissed. He eyed the shaking shoulders gloomily for some seconds;
+and then, as the throbbing in the outraged knuckle subsided, a grin of
+sympathetic comprehension spread over his own face. He picked up the
+bow, sprang to his feet, and strolled over to the edge of a thicket of
+young cane.
+
+The girl, lifting her head, peered at him cautiously through her hair.
+Her laughter was forgotten on the instant, because she guessed that
+his fertile brain was on the trail of some new experiment.
+
+Arriving at the cane-thicket, Grom broke himself half a dozen
+well-hardened, tapering stems, from two to three feet in length, and
+about as thick at their smaller ends as A-ya's little finger.
+
+These seemed to suggest to him the possibility of better results than
+anything he could get from those erratic pebbles.
+
+By this time quite a number of curious spectators--women and children
+mostly, the majority of the men being away hunting, and the rest too
+proud to show their curiosity--had gathered to watch Grom's
+experiments. They were puzzled to make out what it was he was busying
+himself with. But as he was a great chief, and held in deeper awe than
+even Bawr himself, they did not presume to come very near; and they
+had therefore not perceived, or at least they had not apprehended,
+those two trifling mishaps of his. As for Grom, he paid his audience
+no attention whatever. Now that he had possessed himself of those
+slender straight shafts of cane, all else was forgotten. He felt, as
+he looked at them and poised them, that in some vital way they
+belonged to this fascinating implement which A-ya had invented for
+him.
+
+Selecting one of the shafts, he slowly applied the bigger end of it to
+the bow-string, and stood for a long time pondering it, drawing it a
+little way and easing it back without releasing it. Then he called to
+mind that his spears always threw better when they were hurled heavy
+end first. So he turned the little shaft and applied the small end to
+the 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. Grom felt
+that this was progress. The spectators opened their mouths in wonder,
+but durst not venture any comment when Grom was at his mysteries.
+
+Plucking the shaft from the earth, Grom once more laid it to the
+bow-string. As he pulled the string, the shaft wobbled crazily. With a
+growl of impatience, he clapped the fore-finger of his left hand over
+it, holding it in place, and pulled it through the guide thus formed.
+A light flashed upon his brooding intelligence. Slightly crooking his
+finger, so that the shaft could move freely, he drew the string
+backward and forward, with deep deliberation, over and over again. To
+his delight, he found that the shaft was no longer eccentrically
+rebellious, but as docile as he could wish. At last, lifting the bow
+above his head, he drew it strongly, and shot the shaft into the air.
+He shouted as it slipped smoothly through the guiding crook of his
+finger and went soaring skyward as if it would never stop. The eyes of
+the spectators followed its flight with awe, and A-ya, suddenly
+comprehending, caught her breath and snatched the boy to her heart in
+a transport. Her alert mind had grasped, though dimly, the wonder of
+her man's achievement.
+
+Now, though Grom had pointed his shaft skyward, he had taken no
+thought whatever as to its direction, or the distance it might travel.
+As a matter of fact, he had shot towards the Caves. He had shot
+strongly; and that first bow was a stiff one. Most of the folk who
+squatted before the Caves were watching; but there were some who were
+too indifferent or too stupid to take an interest in anything less
+arresting than a thump on the head. Among these was a fat old woman,
+who, with her back to all the excitement, was bending herself double
+to grub in the litter of sticks and bones for some tit-bit which she
+had dropped. Grom's shaft, turning gracefully against the blue came
+darting downward on a long slope, and buried its point in that
+upturned 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 horror
+as if she thought it some kind of snake, and waddled, wildly
+jabbering, into the nearest cave.
+
+An outburst of startled cries arose from all the spectators, but it
+hushed itself almost in the same breath. It was Grom who had done this
+singular thing, smiting unawares from very far off. The old woman must
+have done something to make Grom angry. They were all afraid; and
+several, whose consciences were not quite at ease, followed the old
+woman's example and slipped into the Caves.
+
+As for Grom, his feelings were a mixture of embarrassment and elation.
+He was sorry to have hurt the old woman. He had a ridiculous dislike
+of hurting any one unnecessarily; and when he looked back and saw A-ya
+rocking herself to and fro in heartless mirth, he felt like asking her
+how she would have liked it herself, if she had been in the place of
+the fat old woman. On the other hand, he knew that he had made a great
+discovery, second only to the conquest of the fire. He had found a new
+weapon, of unheard-of, unimagined powers, able to kill swiftly and
+silently and at a great distance. All he had to do was to perfect the
+weapon and learn to control it.
+
+He strode haughtily up to the cave mouth to recover his shaft. The
+people, even the mightiest of the warriors, looked anxious and
+deprecating at his approach; but he gave them never a glance. It would
+not have done to let them think he had wounded the old woman by
+accident. He picked up the shaft and examined its bloodstained point,
+frowning fiercely. Then he glared into the cave where the unlucky
+victim of his experiments had taken refuge. He refitted the shaft to
+the bow-string, and made as if to follow up his stroke with further
+chastisement. Instantly there came from the dark interior a chorus of
+shrill feminine entreaties. He hesitated, seemed to relent, put the
+shaft 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 thought
+and preparation.
+
+An hour or two later, Grom set out from the Caves alone in spite of
+A-ya's pleadings. He wanted complete solitude with his new weapon.
+Besides a generous bundle of canes, of varying lengths and sizes, he
+carried some strips of raw meat, a bunch of plantains, his spear and
+club, and a sort of rude basket, without handle, formed by tying
+together the ends of a roll of green bark.
+
+This basket was a device of A-ya's, which had added greatly to her
+prestige in the tribe, and caused the women to regard her with
+redoubled jealousy. By lining it thickly with wet clay, she was able
+to carry fire in it so securely and simply that Grom had adopted it at
+once, throwing away his uncertain and always troublesome fire-tubes of
+hollow bamboo.
+
+Mounting the steep hillside behind the Caves, Grom turned into a
+high, 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 high
+plateau on a shoulder of the mountain. At the back of the plateau the
+mountain rose again, abruptly, to one of those saw-tooth pinnacles
+which characterized this range. At the base of the steep was a
+narrow fissure in the rock-face, leading into a small grotto which
+Grom had discovered on one of his hunting expeditions. He had used
+it several times already as a retreat when tired of the hubbub of
+the tribe and anxious to ponder in quiet some of the problems which
+for ever tormented his fruitful brain.
+
+Absorbed in meditations upon his new weapons, Grom set himself to
+build a small fire before the entrance of the grotto. The red coals
+from his fire-basket he surrounded and covered with dry grass, dead
+twigs, and small sticks. Then, getting down upon all fours, he blew
+long and steadily into the mass till the smoke which curled up from it
+was streaked with thin flames. As the flames curled higher, his ears
+caught 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 eyes
+drew back slowly to the depths of the cave. Appearing not to have
+observed them, Grom piled the fire with heavier and heavier fuel, till
+it was blazing strongly and full of well-lighted brands. Then he stood
+up, seized a brand, and hurled it into the cave. There was a harsh
+snarl, and the eyes disappeared, the owner of them having apparently
+shrunk off to one side.
+
+A moment or two later the interior was suddenly lighted up with a
+smoky glare. The brand had fallen on a heap of withered grass
+which had formerly been Grom's couch. Grom set his teeth and swung
+up his club; and in the same instant there shot forth two immense
+cave-hyenas, mad with rage and terror.
+
+The great beasts were more afraid of the sudden flare within than of
+the substantial and dangerous fire without. The first swerved just in
+time to escape the fire, and went by so swiftly that the stroke of
+Grom's club caught him only a light, glancing blow on the rump. But
+the second of the pair, the female, was too close behind to swerve in
+time. She dashed straight through the fire, struck Grom with all her
+frantic weight, knocked him flat, and tore off howling down the
+valley, leaving a pungent trail of singed fur on the air.
+
+Uninjured save for an ugly scratch, which bled profusely, down one
+side of his face, Grom picked himself up in a rage and started after
+the fleeing beasts. But his common sense speedily reasserted itself.
+He grunted in disgust, turned back to the fire, and was soon absorbed
+in new experiments with the bow. As for the blaze within the cave, he
+troubled himself no more about it. He knew it would soon burn out. And
+it would leave the cave well cleansed of pestilential insects.
+
+All that afternoon he experimented with his bundle of shafts, to find
+what length and what weight would give the best results. One of the
+arrows he shattered completely, by driving it, at short range,
+straight against the rock-face of the mountain. Two others he lost, by
+shooting them, far beyond his expectations, over the edge of the
+plateau and down into the dense thickets below him, where he did not
+care 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 very
+strong, being made of a stick of dry upland hickory. And the cord of
+raw hide was well-seasoned, stout and tough; though it had a
+troublesome trick of stretching, which forced Grom to restring it many
+times before all the stretch was out of it.
+
+Having satisfied himself as to the power of his bow and the range of
+his arrows, Grom 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 fleshy
+leaves were shredded and shattered. With his straight eye and his
+natural aptitude, he soon grasped the idea of elevation for range, and
+made some respectable shooting. He also found that he could guide the
+arrow without crooking his finger around it. His elation was so
+extreme that he quite forgot to eat, till the closing in of darkness
+put an end to his practice. Then, piling high his fire as a warning to
+prowlers, he squatted in the mouth of the cave and made his meal. For
+water he had to go some little way below the lip of the plateau; but
+carrying a blazing balsam-knot he had nothing to fear from the beasts
+that lay in ambush about the spring. They slunk away sullenly at the
+approach of the waving flame.
+
+That night Grom slept securely, with three fires before his door.
+Every hour or two, vigilant woodsman that he was, he would wake up to
+replenish the fires, and be asleep again even in the act of lying
+down. And when the dawn came red and amber around the shoulder of the
+saw-toothed peak, he was up again and out into the chill, sweet air
+with his arrows.
+
+The difficulty which now confronted him was that of giving his shafts
+a penetrating point. Being of a very hard-fibered cane, akin to
+bamboo, they would take a kind of splintering-point of almost needle
+sharpness. But it was fragile; and the cane being hollow, the point
+was necessarily on one side, which affected the accuracy of the
+flight. There were no flints in the neighborhood, or slaty rocks,
+which he could split into edged and pointed fragments. He tried
+hardening his points in the fire; but the results were not altogether
+satisfactory. He thought of tipping some of the shafts with thorns, or
+with the steely points of the old aloe leaves; but he could not, at
+the moment, devise such a method of fixing these formidable weapons in
+place as would not quite destroy their efficiency. Finally he made up
+his mind that the thing to use would be bone, ground into a suitable
+shape between two stones. But this was a matter that would have to
+await his return to the Caves, and would then call for much careful
+devising. For the present he would perforce content himself with such
+points as he had fined down and hardened in the fire.
+
+This matter settled in his mind, Grom burned to put his wonderful new
+weapon to practical test. He descended cautiously the steep slope from
+the eastern edge of his plateau--a broken region of ledges,
+subtropical thickets, and narrow, grassy glades, with here and there
+some tree of larger growth rising solitary like a watch-tower. Knowing
+this was a favorite feeding-hour for many of the grass-eaters, he hid
+himself in the well-screened crotch of a deodar, overlooking a green
+glade, and waited.
+
+He had not long to wait, for the region swarmed with game. Out from a
+runway some thirty or forty yards up the glade stepped a huge,
+dun-colored bull, with horns like scimitars each as long as Grom's
+arm. His flanks were scarred with long wounds but lately healed, and
+Grom realized that he was a solitary, beaten and driven out from his
+herd by some mightier rival. The bull glanced warily about him, and
+then fell to cropping the grass.
+
+The beast offered an admirable target. Grom's arrow sped noiselessly
+between the curtaining branches, and found its mark high on the bull's
+fore-shoulder. It penetrated--but not to a depth of more than two or
+three inches. And Grom, though elated by his good shot, realized that
+such a wound would be nothing more than an irritant.
+
+Startled and infuriated, the bull roared and pawed the sod, and glared
+about him to locate his unseen assailant. He had not the remotest idea
+of the direction from which the strange attack had come. The galling
+smart in his shoulder grew momentarily more severe. He lashed back at
+it savagely with the side of his horn, but the arrow was just out of
+his reach. Then, bewildered and alarmed, he tried to escape from this
+new kind of fly with the intolerable sting by galloping furiously up
+and down the glade. As he passed the deodar, Grom let drive another
+arrow, at close range. This, too, struck, and stuck. But it did not go
+deep enough to produce any serious effect. The animal roared again,
+stared about him as if he thought the place was bewitched, and plunged
+headlong into the nearest thicket, tearing out both arrows as he went
+through the close-set stems. Grom heard him crashing onward down the
+slope, and smiled to think of the surprise in store for any antagonist
+that might cross the mad brute's path.
+
+This experiment upon the wild bull had shown Grom one thing clearly.
+He must arm his arrows with a more penetrating point. Until he could
+carry out his idea of giving them tips of bones, he must find some
+shoots of solid, pithless growth to take the place of his light hollow
+canes. For the next hour or two he searched the jungle carefully and
+warily, looking for a young growth that might immediately serve his
+purpose.
+
+But there in the jungle everything that was hard enough was crooked or
+gnarled, everything that was straight enough was soft and sappy. It
+was not till the sun was almost over his head, and the heat was urging
+him back to the coolness of his grotto, that he came across something
+worth making a trial of. On a bleak wind-swept knoll, far out on the
+mountain-side, lay the trunk of an old hickory-tree, which had
+evidently been shattered by lightning. From the roots, tenacious of
+life, had sprung up a throng of saplings, ranging from a foot or two
+in height to the level of Grom's head. They were as straight and slim
+as the canes. And their hardness was proved to Grom's satisfaction
+when he tried to break them off. They were tough, too, so that he
+almost lost his patience over them, before he learned that the best
+way to deal with them was to strip them down, in the direction of the
+fiber, where they sprang from the parent trunk or root. Having at
+length gathered an armful, he returned to his grotto and proceeded to
+shape the refractory butts in the fire. As he squatted between the
+cave door and the fire he made his meal of raw flesh and plantains,
+and gazed out contemplatively over the vast, rankly-green landscape
+below him, musing upon the savage and monstrous strife which went on
+beneath that mask of wide-flung calm. And as he pondered, the fire
+which he had subjugated was quietly doing his work for him.
+
+The result was beyond his utmost expectations. After judicious
+charring, the ends being turned continually in the glowing coals, he
+rubbed away the charred portions between two stones, and found that he
+could thus work up an evenly-rounded point. The point thus obtained
+was keen and hard; and as he balanced this new shaft in his hand he
+realized that its weight would add vastly to its power of penetration.
+When he tried a shot with it, he found that it flew farther and
+straighter. It drove through the tough, fleshy leaf of the prickly
+pear as if it hardly noticed the obstruction. He fashioned himself a
+half-dozen more of these highly-efficient shafts, and then set out
+again--this time down the ravine--to seek a living target for his
+practice.
+
+The ravine was winding and of irregular width, terraced here and there
+with broken ledges, here and there cut into by steep little narrow
+gullies. Its bottom was in part bare rock; but wherever there was an
+accumulation of soil, and some tiny spring oozing up through the
+fissures, there the vegetation grew rank, starred with vivid blooms of
+canna and hibiscus. In many places the ledges were draped with a dense
+curtain of the flat-flowered, pink-and-gold mesembryanthemum. It was a
+region well adapted to the ambuscading beasts; and Grom moved
+stealthily as a panther, keeping for the most part along the upper
+ledges, crouching low to cross the open spots, and slipping into cover
+every few minutes to listen and peer and sniff.
+
+Presently he came to a spot which seemed to offer him every advantage
+as a place of ambush. It was a ledge some twenty feet above the valley
+level, with a sort of natural parapet behind which he could crouch,
+and, unseen, keep an eye on all the glades and runways below. Behind
+him the rock-face was so nearly perpendicular that no enemy could
+steal upon him from the rear. He laid his club and his spear down
+beside him, selected one of his best arrows, and hoped that a fat buck
+would come by, or one of those little, spotted, two-toed horses whose
+flesh was so prized by the people of the Caves. Such a prize would be
+a proof to all the tribe of the potency of his new weapon.
+
+For nearly an hour he waited, moveless, save for his ranging eyes, as
+the rock on which he leaned. To a hunter like Grom, schooled to
+infinite patience, this was nothing. He knew that, in the woods, if
+one waits long enough and keeps still enough, he is bound to see
+something interesting. At last it came. It was neither the fat buck
+nor the little two-toed horse with dapple hide, but a young
+cow-buffalo. Grom noticed at once that she was nervous and puzzled.
+She seemed to suspect that she was being followed and was undecided
+what to do. Once she faced about angrily, staring into the coverts
+behind her, and made as if to charge. Had she been an old cow, or a
+bull, she would have charged; but her inexperience made her
+irresolute. She snorted, faced about again, and moved on, ears, eyes
+and wide nostrils one note of wrathful interrogation. She was well
+within range, and Grom would have tried a shot at her except for his
+seasoned wariness. He would rather see, before revealing himself, what
+foe it was that dared to trail so dangerous a quarry. The buffalo
+moved on slowly out of range, and vanished down a runway; and
+immediately afterwards the stealthy pursuer came in view.
+
+To Grom'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 great
+chief, Bawr himself, hunting alone after his haughty and daring
+fashion. Between Grom and Bawr there was the fullest understanding,
+and Grom would have whistled that plover-cry, his private signal, but
+for the risk of interfering with Bawr's chase. Once more, therefore,
+he held himself in check; while Bawr, his eyes easily reading the
+trail, crept on with the soundless step of a wild cat.
+
+But Grom was not the only hunter lying in ambush in the sun-drenched
+ravine. Out from a bed of giant, red-blooming canna arose the
+diabolical, grinning head and monstrous shoulders of a saber-tooth,
+and stared after Bawr. Then the whole body emerged with a noiseless
+bound. For a second the gigantic beast stood there, with one paw
+uplifted, its golden-tawny bulk seeming to quiver in the downpour of
+intense sunlight. It was a third as tall again at the shoulders as the
+biggest Himalayan tiger, its head was flat-skulled like a tiger's, and
+its upper jaw was armed with two long, yellow, saber-like tusks,
+projecting downwards below the lower jaw. This appalling monster
+started after Bawr with a swift, crouching rush, as silent, for all
+its weight, as if its feet were shod with thistledown.
+
+Grom leapt to his feet with a wild yell of warning, at the same time
+letting fly an arrow. In his haste the shaft went wide. Bawr, looking
+over his shoulder, saw the giant beast almost upon him. With a
+tremendous bound he gained the foot of a tree. Dropping his club and
+spear, he sprang desperately, caught a branch, and swung himself
+upward.
+
+But the saber-tooth was already at his heels, before he had time to
+swing quite out of reach. The gigantic brute gathered itself for a
+spring which would have enabled it to pluck Bawr from his refuge like
+a ripe fig. But that spring was never delivered. With a roar of rage
+the monster turned instead, and bit furiously at the shaft of an arrow
+sticking in its flank. Grom'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-tooth
+forgot all about its quarry in the tree. It had caught sight of Grom
+when he uttered his yell of warning, and it knew instantly whence the
+strange attack had come. It bit off the protruding shaft; and then,
+fixing its dreadful eyes on Grom, it ceased its snarling and came
+charging for the ledge with a rush which seemed likely to carry it
+clear up the twenty-foot perpendicular of smooth rock.
+
+Grom, enamored of the new weapon, forgot the spear which was likely to
+be far more efficient at these close quarters. Leaning far out over
+the parapet, he drew his arrow to the head and let drive just as the
+monster reared itself, open-jawed, at the wall. The pointed hickory
+went down into the gaping gullet, and stood out some inches at the
+side of the neck. With a horrible coughing screech the monster
+recoiled, put its head between its paws, and tried to claw the anguish
+from its throat. But after a moment, seeming to realize that this was
+impossible, it backed away, gathered itself together, and sprang for
+the ledge. It received another of Grom's shafts deep in the chest,
+without seeming to notice the wound; and its impetus was so tremendous
+that it succeeded in getting its fore-paws fixed upon the ledge.
+Clinging there, its enormous pale-green eyes staring straight into
+Grom's, it struggled to draw itself up all the way--an effort in which
+it would doubtless have succeeded at once but for that first arrow in
+its entrails. The iron claws of its hinder feet rasped noisily on the
+rock-face.
+
+Grom dropped his bow beside him and reached for the spear. His hand
+grasped the club instead; but there was no time to change. Swinging
+the stone-head weapon in air, he brought it down, with a grunt of huge
+effort, full upon one of those giant paws which clutched the edge of
+the parapet. Crushed and numbed, the grip of that paw fell away; but
+at the same moment one of the hinder paws got over the edge, and
+clung. And there the monster hung, its body bent in a contorted bow.
+
+Bawr, meanwhile, seeing Grom's peril, had dropped from his tree,
+snatched up his spear and club, and rushed in to the rescue. It was
+courage, this, of the finest, counting no odds; for down there on the
+level he would have stood no ghost of a chance had the beast turned
+back upon him. Grom yelled to him to keep away, and swung up his club
+for another shattering blow. But in that same moment the great glaring
+eyes filmed and rolled upwards; blood spouted from between the gaping
+jaws; and with a spluttering cough the monster lost its hold. It fell,
+with a soft but jarring thud, upon its back, and slowly rolled over
+upon its side, pawing the air aimlessly. The arrow in the throat had
+done its work.
+
+With fine self-restraint Bawr refrained from striking, that he might
+seem to usurp no share in Grom's amazing achievement. He stood leaning
+upon his spear, calmly watching the last feeble paroxysm, till Grom
+came scrambling down from the ledge and stood beside him. He took the
+bow and arrows, and examined them in silence. Then he turned upon Grom
+with burning eyes.
+
+"You found the Fire for our people. You saved our people from the
+hordes of the Bow-legs. You have saved my life now, slaying the
+monster from very far off with these little sticks which you have
+made. It is you who should be Chief, not I."
+
+Grom 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, I
+will teach him now this new thing. And we will make another just like
+it, that when we return to the Caves Bawr also shall know how to
+strike from very far off."
+
+With their rough-edged spear-heads of flint they set themselves to the
+skinning of the saber-tooth. Then they went back to the high plateau,
+where Bawr was taught to shoot a straight shaft. And on the following
+day they returned to the fires of the tribe, carrying between them,
+shoulder high, slung upon their two spears, this first trophy of the
+bow, the monstrous head and hide of the saber-tooth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE DESTROYING SPLENDOR
+
+
+I
+
+To Grom, hunting farther to the south of the Tribal Fires than he had
+ever ranged before, came suddenly a woman running, mad with fright, a
+baby clutched to her bosom. She fell at Grom's feet, gibbering
+breathlessly, and plainly imploring his protection. Both she and the
+child were streaming with blood, and covered with strange cup-like
+wounds, as if the flesh had been gouged out of them with some
+irresistible circular instrument.
+
+Grom swiftly fitted an arrow to his bow, and peered through the trees
+to see what manner of adversary the fugitive was like to bring upon
+him. At the same time, he gave a piercing cry, which was answered at
+once from some distance behind him.
+
+Having satisfied himself (the country being fairly open) that the
+woman's pursuer, whatever it might be, was not close upon her heels,
+and that no immediate danger was in view, he turned his attention upon
+the woman herself. She was not of his race, and he looked down upon
+her with cold aversion. At first glance he thought she was one of the
+Bow-legs. But the color of her skin, where it could be seen for the
+blood, was different, being rather of a copper-red; and she was
+neither so hairy on the body nor of so ape-like proportions. She was
+sufficiently hideous, however, and of some race plainly inferior to
+the People of the Caves. The natural instinct of a Cave Man would have
+been to knock her and her offspring on the head without ceremony--an
+effective method of guarding his more highly developed breed from the
+mixture of an inferior blood. But Grom, the Chief and the wise man,
+had many vague impulses moving him at times which were novel to the
+human play-fellows of Earth's childhood. He disliked hurting a woman
+or a child. He might, quite conceivably, have refused to concern
+himself with the suppliant before him, and merely left her and her
+baby to the chances of the jungle. But the peculiar character of her
+wounds interested him. She aroused his curiosity. Here was a new
+mystery for him to investigate. The woman was saved.
+
+Knowing a few words of the Bow-legs' tongue, which he had learned from
+his lame slave Ook-ootsk, he addressed the crouching woman, telling
+her not to fear. The tongue was unintelligible to her, but the tones
+of his voice seemed to reassure her. She sat up, revealing again the
+form of the little one, which she had been shielding with her hair and
+her bosom as if she feared the tall white hunter might dash its brains
+out; and Grom noted with keen interest that the child also had one of
+those terrible, cup-shaped wounds, almost obliterating its fat,
+copper-colored shoulder. He saw, also, that the woman's face, though
+uncomely, was more intelligent and human than the bestial faces of the
+Bow-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 as
+if some one had sat on it hard and pushed it in. The idea made him
+smile, and the smile completed the woman's reassurance. She poured a
+stream of chatter quite unlike the clicks and barkings of the
+Bow-legs. Then she crept closer to Grom's feet, and proceeded to give
+her little one the breast. It was twisting uneasily with the pain of
+its dreadful wound, but it nursed hungrily, and with the prudent
+stoicism of a wild creature it made no outcry.
+
+As Grom stood studying the pair, the mother kept throwing glances of
+horror over her shoulder, as if expecting her assailants to arrive at
+any moment. Grom followed her eyes, but there was no sign of any
+pursuit. Then he observed the fugitives' wounds more closely, and
+noted that the blood upon them was already, in most cases, pretty well
+coagulated. He noted also certain other wounds, deep, narrow
+punctures, like stabs. He guessed that they could not be much less
+than an hour old. The Thing, whatever it was, which had inflicted
+them--the Thing with so strange a mouth, and so strange a way of using
+it--had apparently given up the pursuit. Grom's curiosity burned
+within him, and he was angry at the woman because she could not speak
+to him in his own language, or at least in that of the Bow-legs. It
+seemed to him willful obstinacy on her part to refuse to understand
+the Bow-legs' tongue. He stooped over her, and roughly examined one of
+the wounds with his huge fingers. She winced, but made no complaint,
+only covering her baby with her hair and her arms in terror lest it
+should suffer a like harsh handling.
+
+With a qualm of compunction, which rather puzzled him, Grom gave over
+his investigating, and turned to a tall, slim youth with a great mop
+of chestnut hair who at this moment came running up to him. It was
+A-ya's young brother, Mo, Grom's favorite follower and hunting mate;
+and he had come at speed, being very swift of foot, in answer to
+Grom's signal. Breathing quickly, he stood at Grom's side, and looked
+down with wonder and dislike upon the crouching woman.
+
+Briefly Grom explained, and then pointed to the inexplicable wounds.
+The youth, unable to believe that any human creature should be unable
+to comprehend plain human speech, such as that of the Cave People,
+tried his own hand at questioning the woman. He got a flow of chatter
+in reply, but, being able to make nothing out of it, he imagined it
+was not speech at all, and turned away angrily, thinking that she
+mocked him. Grom, smiling at the mistake, explained that the woman was
+talking her own language, which he intended presently to learn as he
+had learned that of the Bow-legs.
+
+"But now," said he, "we will go and see what it is that has bitten the
+woman. It is surely something with a strange mouth."
+
+Mo, who was not only brave to recklessness, but who would have
+followed Grom through the mouth of hell, sprang forward eagerly. Grom,
+who realized that the mystery before him was a perilous one, and who
+loved to do dangerous things in a prudent manner, looked to his
+bow-string and saw that his arrows were handy in his girdle, before he
+started on the venture. Besides his bow he carried the usual two
+spears and his inseparable stone-headed club. Though danger was his
+delight, it was not the danger itself but the thrill of overcoming it
+that he loved.
+
+The moment he stepped forward, however, the woman divined his purpose
+and leapt wildly to her feet. She sprang straight in front of him,
+screaming and gesticulating. She was plainly horror-stricken at the
+thought that the two men should venture into the perils from which she
+had so hardly escaped. To Grom's keen intelligence her gestures were
+eloquent. She managed to convey to him the idea of great numbers, and
+the impossibility of his dealing with them. When he attempted to pass
+her, she threw herself down and clung to his feet, shaking with her
+terror. When she saw that Grom was at last impressed, she stretched
+herself out as if dead, and then, after a few moments of ghastly
+rigidity, with fixed, staring eyes, she came to and held up one hand
+with the fingers outspread.
+
+This frantic pantomime Grom could read in no other way than as an
+attempt to tell him that the unknown Something had killed five of the
+woman's companions. The information gave him pause. Adventurous as he
+was, he had small respect for mere pig-headed recklessness. He was
+resolved to solve the problem--but after all it could abide his more
+thorough preparation.
+
+"Come back," he ordered, turning to the impetuous Mo. "She says they
+are too many for us two. They have killed five of her people. We will
+go back to the Caves, and after three sleeps for good counsel, we will
+return with fire and find the destroying Thing."
+
+
+II
+
+On their return to the Caves, Grom gave the strange woman and her baby
+to his faithful slave Ook-ootsk, who accepted the gift with enthusiasm
+because, being a Bow-leg, he had not been allowed to take any of the
+Cave Women to wife. He lavished his attentions upon the unhappy
+stranger, but he could make no more of her speech than Grom 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 dreadful
+and destroying Thing was something that flew--therefore, a great
+flesh-eating bird. But she gathered, also, that it was something which
+in some way bore a resemblance to fire--for the woman, after getting
+over her first terror of the dancing flames, kept pointing to them and
+then to her wounds in a most suggestive way. This, however, as Grom
+rather scornfully pointed out, was too absurd. There was nothing that
+could be in the least like fire itself; and the wounds of the
+fugitives had no likeness whatever to the corrosive bites of the
+flame. A-ya took the correction submissively, but held her own
+thought; and when a day or two later, events proved her to have been
+right, she discreetly refrained from calling her lord's attention to
+the fact--a point upon which Grom was equally reserved.
+
+With so provocative a mystery waiting to be solved, Grom could not
+long rest idle. Had she not known well it would be a waste of
+breath, A-ya would have tried to dissuade him from the perilous, and
+to her mind profitless, adventure. It was one she shrank from in
+spite of her tried courage and her unwavering trust in Grom's prowess.
+The mystery of it daunted her. She feared it in the same way that
+she feared the dark. But she kept her fears to herself, and claimed
+her long-established right to go with Grom on the expedition. Grom
+was willing enough, for there was no one whose readiness and nerve, in
+a supreme crisis, he could so depend upon, and he wanted her close at
+hand with her fire-basket. There was nothing to keep her at home, as
+the children were looked after by Ook-ootsk.
+
+It was a very little party which started southward from the
+Caves--simply Grom, A-ya, young Mo, and a dwarfish kinsman of Grom's,
+named Loob, who was the swiftest runner in the tribe and noted for his
+cunning as a scout. He could go through underbrush like a shadow, and
+hide where there was apparently no hiding-place, making himself
+indistinguishable from the surroundings like a squatting partridge.
+Each one carried a bow, two light spears, and a club--except A-ya, who
+had no club, and only one spear. The weapon she chiefly relied upon
+was the bow, which she loved with passion. She considered herself the
+inventor of it; and in the accuracy of her shooting she outdid even
+Grom. In addition to these weapons, each member of the party except
+the leader himself carried a fire-basket, in which a mass of red coals
+mixed with punk smouldered in a bed of moist clay.
+
+The little expedition traveled Indian file, Grom leading the way, with
+A-ya at his heels, then Loob the Scout, and young Mo bringing up the
+rear. They had started about dawn, when the first of the morning rose
+was just beginning to pale the cave-mouth fires. They traveled
+swiftly, but every two hours or so they would make a brief halt beside
+a spring to drink and breathe themselves and to look to the precious
+fires in the fire-baskets. When it wanted perhaps an hour of noon,
+they came to a little patch of meadow surrounding a solitary
+Judas-tree covered with bloom. Here they built a fire, for the
+replenishing of the coals in the fire-baskets, and as a menace to
+prowling beasts. Then they dined on their sun-dried meat and on ripe
+plantains gathered during the journey. Having dined, the three younger
+members of the party stretched themselves out in the shade for their
+noon sleep, while Grom, whose restless brain never suffered him to
+sleep by day, kept watch, and pondered the adventure which lay before
+them.
+
+As Grom sat there, ten or a dozen paces from the fire, absorbed in thought,
+his eyes gradually focussed themselves upon a big purple-and-lemon orchid
+bloom, which glowed forth conspicuously from the rank green
+jungle-growth fringing the meadow. The gorgeous bloom seemed to rise out of
+a black, curiously gnarled elbow of branch or trunk which thrust itself out
+through the leafage. Grom's eyes dwelt for a time, unheeding, upon this
+piece of misshapen tree trunk. Suddenly he saw the blackness wink. His
+startled vision cleared itself instantly, and revealed to him the hideous,
+two-horned mask of a black rhinoceros, peering forth just under the
+orchid blossom.
+
+Grom's first impulse was to wake the sleepers with a yell and shepherd
+them to refuge in the tree--for the gigantic woolly rhinoceros, with
+his armor of impenetrable hide, was a foe whom Man had not yet learned
+to handle with any certainty. But a deeper instinct held Grom
+motionless. He knew that the monster, whose eyesight was always dim
+and feeble, could not see him distinctly, and was in all probability
+staring in stupid wonder at the dancing flames of the camp-fire. As
+long as no smell of man should reach the brute's sensitive nostrils to
+rouse its rage, it was not likely to charge. There was no wind, and
+the air about him was full of the spicy bitterness of the wood-smoke.
+Grom decided that the safest thing was to keep perfectly still and
+wait for the next move in the game to come from the monster. He
+devoutly trusted that the sleepers behind him were sleeping soundly,
+and that no one would wake and sit up to attract the monster's
+attention.
+
+Grom could now see plainly that it was the fire, and not himself,
+which the rhinoceros was staring at. The shifting flames, and the
+smell of the smoke, apparently puzzled it. After a moment or two, it
+took a step forward, so that half of its huge, black, shaggy bulk
+projected from the banked greenery as from a frame. Then it stood
+motionless, blinking its little malignant eyes, till the silent
+suspense grew to be a strain even upon Grom's well-seasoned nerves.
+
+At last a large stick, laid across the fire, burned through and fell
+apart. The flames leapt upwards with redoubled vigor, preceded by a
+volley of crackling sparks. Knowing the temper of the rhinoceros, Grom
+expected it to fly into a fury and charge upon the fire at once. His
+mouth opened, indeed, for the yell of warning which should wake the
+sleepers and send them leaping into the tree. But he checked himself
+in time. The monster, for once in its life, seemed to be abashed. The
+curling red flames were too elusive a foe for it. With a grunt of
+uneasiness, it drew back into the leafage; and in a moment or two Grom
+heard the giant bulk crashing off through the jungle at a gallop. The
+unwonted 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 could
+forget the cause of its terror.
+
+That afternoon toward sundown the expedition reached the point where
+the fugitive had made her appeal to Grom. For fear of giving
+information to the unknown enemy, no fires were lighted. The night was
+passed in a dense and lofty tree-top. For Grom, strung up with
+excitement, suspense and curiosity, there was little sleep. For the
+most part he perched on his woven platform with his arms about his
+knees, listening to the sounds of the night--the occasional sudden
+rush of a hunting beast, the agonized scream and scuffle, the
+gurglings and noisy slaverings that told of the unseen tragedies
+enacted far down in the murderous dark. But there was no sound novel
+to his own experience. Once there came a scratching of claws and a
+sniffing at the base of the tree.
+
+But Grom dropped a live coal from his fire-basket, and chanced to make
+a 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.
+Grom had a glimpse of huge shapes and startled, savage eyes backing
+away from the circle of light. The blaze died down as quickly as it
+had arisen; and thereafter the night prowlers kept at a distance from
+the tree. But the sleepers had all been thoroughly aroused and till
+dawn they sat discussing, for the hundredth time, the chances of the
+morrow's venture.
+
+Before the sun was clear of the horizon, the little party was again
+upon the march, but now going with the wariness of a sable. They no
+longer went Indian file, but flitting singly from tree to tree, from
+covert to covert, Grom picking up the old trail of the fugitive, the
+rest of the party keeping him in view and peering ahead for some sign
+of the unknown Terror. The red woman in her flight had left a sharp
+trail enough; but in the lapse of three days it had been so
+obliterated that all Grom's wood-craft was needed to decipher it, and
+his progress was slow. He began to be puzzled at the absence of any
+other trail, of any footsteps of a mysterious, unknown monster. Such
+tracks as crossed those of the fugitive, however terrible, were all
+familiar to his eye.
+
+Suddenly he almost stumbled over a hideous sight. A low whistle
+brought his followers closing in upon him. The skeleton of a
+full-grown man lay outstretched in the grass. The bones were
+fresh--bloodstained and bright--and a swarm of blood-sucking insects
+arose from them. They were picked minutely clean, except for a portion
+of the skull, where the long, strong, densely matted hair seemed to
+have served as an effective armor. The bones were not pulled about, or
+crushed for their marrow, as they would have been if the victim had
+been the prey of any of the great carnivorous beasts. And there were
+no tracks about it save those of a few small rat-like creatures. It
+was clear that the Mystery, whatever it might be, had wings.
+
+"A bird!" whispered A-ya, with a gleam of triumph in her eyes, at the
+same time glancing up into the tree-tops apprehensively. But Grom did
+not think so. There were no marks of mighty claws on the turf around
+the skeleton.
+
+Grom cast about him an eager but anxious eye. The country was not
+densely wooded at this point, but studded with low thickets, and set
+here and there with scattered trees. From a little way ahead came a
+gleam of calm water through the greenery. It was a scene of peace, and
+security, and summer loveliness. Its very beauty seemed to Grom an
+added menace, as if some peculiar treachery must lurk behind it.
+
+In the center of an open glade, not far from the skeleton, Grom set
+his party to building a circle of fires, as likely to afford the
+surest kind of a refuge. A supply of fuel having been gathered, he
+directed A-ya and Mo to remain and tend the fires and not to leave the
+circle unless he should summon them. Loob, the cunning scout, he sent
+off to the left through the underbrush. He himself followed the trail
+of the fugitive--now doubled by that of the other fugitive whose
+skeleton lay there in the sun--down toward that gleam of water through
+the trees. A-ya gazed after him anxiously as he vanished, half minded
+to dare his displeasure and follow him.
+
+Grom was presently able to make out that the water was a wide, reedy
+lake or the arm of a shallow river. There was no wind, and the surface
+shone like clear glass. But once and again his eyes were dazzled by a
+dart of intense radiance, a great flash of rose or violet or
+blue-green flame, shooting over the surface of the water. A memory of
+what A-ya had professed to gather from the stranger woman rushed into
+his mind. Perhaps the Destroying Thing was like a bird, and
+nevertheless, at the same time, something like fire. He felt himself
+confronted by a mystery which made even his tried nerves creep; and he
+hid himself in the densest undergrowth as he stole forward toward the
+water. He had forgotten, and forsaken, the trail he was following, in
+his haste to solve the problem of those darting splendors.
+
+A few moments more and he gained the edge of an open glade which led
+straight to the water. He paused behind the screening leaves. Out over
+the water a bar of ruby light, surrounded by a globe of rose-pink
+mist, shot by and vanished from his narrow field of vision. He was
+just about to thrust out his head and crane his neck to follow the
+gorgeous apparition, when a peculiar dry rustling in the air above
+checked him. He glanced up cautiously, and saw hovering, not more than
+twenty or thirty yards away, a beautiful and dreadful being.
+
+In shape it was exactly like a dragon-fly; but the length of its
+flaming violet body was greater than that of Grom's longest arrow. The
+spread of its two pairs of transparent, crystal-shining, colorless
+wings 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 of
+its monstrous head, seemed to see everywhere at once; and Grom
+shivered with the feeling that they had spied him out and were peering
+into his very soul.
+
+The awful eyes may have seen him, indeed; but at that moment they
+spied out something else which apparently concerned them more. With a
+pounce like a flash of violet lightning--and, indeed, almost as
+swift--the bright shape swooped to the grass. The four shining wings
+waved there for a moment, and there seemed to be a mild struggle. Then
+the giant fly rose again, lightly, into the air, holding in the clutch
+of its six slender, jointed legs the body of one of those black,
+rat-like animals which Grom knew so well as infesting the grass of all
+meadows near the water. The captor flew to a naked branch near the
+waterside, alighted upon it, and proceeded to make its meal, holding
+up the body between the end joints of its front pair of legs and
+turning it over and over deftly while its appalling jaws both crushed
+and mangled it. The process was amazingly swift. In the space of a
+couple of minutes all the blood, flesh, and soft material of the rat
+were squeezed out and sucked down. The remnants were rolled into a
+hard little ball, perfectly spherical, and scornfully tossed aside.
+And the monster, leaping into the air with a rustle of its glittering
+wings, flashed off over the water.
+
+Almost in the same moment an amazingly loud rustle, like the sweep of
+a fierce gust of rain upon a rank of palmetto leaves, filled the air
+above the glade, and Grom, looking up with a start, saw a great shoal
+of the radiant shapes storm by, as if with the rainbow entangled in
+their wings. He wondered upon what foray they were bent; and now for
+the first time he realized, with a creeping of the flesh, what it was
+that 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 the
+shore toward the left; and Grom drew a long breath as he assured
+himself that their course was taking them far from the fires of A-ya
+and Mo.
+
+When Grom lowered his eyes to earth again he started. On the side of
+the stump of a fallen tree, out in the glade not more than eight or
+ten yards distant, clung one of the monsters, scintillating blue-green
+and amethyst in the full blaze of the sun. Its wings, exquisitely
+netted and of crystal transparency, were tinged with an ineffable
+purple iridescence. Its jointed body, slightly longer than Grom's arm,
+was nearly as thick as his wrist, and ended at the tail with a
+formidable double claw. Its six legs, arranged in three pairs under
+the thorax, were armed on the inner sides with powerful spines,
+needle-pointed and steel hard, with which to grip and hold its
+victims. The thorax, from the back of which sprouted the four great
+wings, was of the thickness of Grom's forearm, while its head was as
+big as Grom's two great fists put together. It was this head which
+held Grom's fascinated gaze, giving him more of the sensation of cold
+fear than he had ever known before. More than two-thirds of the head
+consisted of a pair of huge, globose eyes, without pupil, ethereally
+transparent, yet unfathomable. From the depths of them flamed a
+ceaselessly changing radiance of blue-green, purple and violet. Grom
+found the stare of those blank, pupilless eyes almost intolerable.
+
+It was plainly straight at him, through the ineffectual screen of the
+leafage, that the dreadful insect was staring. At first it stared with
+the back of its head. Then, very deliberately, it turned its head
+completely around, without moving its body a hair-breadth, till its
+mouth was in the same plane with its back. This gave Grom a sense of
+disgust, 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 great
+cup-shaped wounds on the woman and the child. The mouth took up the
+remaining third of the head, and seemed to consist of globular discs
+working one over the other, so as either to cut cleanly or to grind.
+They were working, slowly, now--and Grom felt suddenly that he must
+put a stop to it, that he must put out the awful light in those
+monstrous devil eyes. Stealthily, almost imperceptibly, he fitted an
+arrow to his bow, raised it, drew it, and took a long, steady aim. He
+must not miss. The shaft flew--and the great fly was pinned, through
+the thorax, to the soft, rotten wood of its perch.
+
+To Grom's horror that stroke, which to any beast he knew would have at
+once been fatal, did not kill the monstrous fly. Its struggles, and
+the beating of its four great wings were so violent that the
+arrow-head was presently wrenched loose from its hold in the wood, and
+the raging splendor, with the shaft half-way through its thorax,
+bounded into the air. It darted straight at Grom, who had prudently
+edged in among a tangle of stems. Its fury carried it through the
+screen of leafage--but then, its wings impeded by the branches, and
+the arrow hampering it, it dashed itself to the earth. Instantly Grom
+was upon it, stamping its slim body, as it lay there blazing and
+quivering, into the soil. The violet light in the huge, pupilless eyes
+still stared up at him implacable, from a head turned squarely over
+the back. But in a cold fury Grom shattered the gleaming head with his
+club. Then he trod the silver wings to dust.
+
+Having slaked his wrath effectually, Grom turned to stare forth again
+at those destroying splendors darting and glittering above the surface
+of 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 for
+help. The shouting changed at once to a scream of terror, and Grom
+started to the rescue on the full run--taking care, however, to keep
+within cover of the thickets. But before he had gone a quarter of a
+mile he heard A-ya's voice calling him, wildly, insistently, mingled
+with excited yells from Mo. He shouted in reply and dashed madly for
+the fires. The peril of A-ya put all other considerations out of his
+mind.
+
+As he burst forth into the glade of refuge, he saw A-ya and young Mo
+leaping about frantically among their fires, now trying to stir the
+fires to a fiercer blaze, now beating upwards with their spears, while
+above them darted and gleamed and swooped and scintillated, with a
+horrid dry rustling of their silver wings, shoal upon shoal of the
+devouring monsters. As he burst into the open, with a great shout of
+encouragement, something dropped upon him. He felt his head instantly
+caged by six steel-like legs which gripped like jaws, their spines
+sinking deep into the flesh of neck and cheek. He reached up his left
+hand, caught his dreadful assailant just where the head and thorax
+join, and strove to throttle it. This was impossible, by reason of the
+insect's armor, but he succeeded in holding off those horrid jaws from
+his face as he dashed for the circle. Another monster swooped and
+struck its spines into his back, and bit a great mouthful out of his
+shoulder. But he gained the fires, and, holding his breath, sprang
+right through the fiercest flame. The wings of his assailants
+shrivelled instantly, and the flame, drawn into the mouth of their
+breathing tubes, sealed them up. Grom tore them off, and slammed the
+writhing, wingless bodies into the fire.
+
+Inside the circle, now that the fires were burning high, it was
+possible to defend oneself effectually, as the bulk of the assailants
+seemed to realize that the flames were fatal to their frail wings. But
+there were enough so headlong in their ferocity that both Grom and Mo
+were kept busy beating them off with spears, while A-ya fed the fires;
+and the ground inside the circle was littered with the radiant bodies
+of the dying insects, which, even in dying, bit like bull-dogs if foot
+or leg came within reach. Grom noticed that their supply of fuel was
+all but gone, and his heart sank. He measured with his eyes the
+distance to the nearest thickets that looked dense enough for a
+shelter.
+
+"We'll have to run for those bushes," he said presently. "They can't
+fly in where the branches are thick. It breaks their wings."
+
+"Good," said young Mo. But A-ya, whose shapely shoulders and thighs
+were already covered with hideous wounds, trembled at the prospect.
+
+At that moment, however an amazing change came over the scene. A black
+thunder-cloud passed across the face of the sun. The moment the
+sunshine vanished the destroyers seemed to forget their fury. All the
+life and energy went out of them. They simply flocked to the nearest
+trees and hung themselves up, gigantic, jewelled blooms, upon the
+branches. In less than a minute every dreadful wing was stilled.
+
+"Now is our time. Come!" commanded Grom, leading the way out of the
+circle.
+
+"Let's stop and kill them all!" pleaded young Mo, his eyes red with
+rage.
+
+But Grom pointed to the cloud. "It will pass quickly," said he. "We
+must be far from here before the sun shows his face again."
+
+He paused, however, to transfix upon his spear-head one of their
+wounded but still fluttering foes, that he might be able to show the
+tribe what manner of monsters they had had to deal with. Both A-ya and
+Mo followed his example; and they all ran off down the glade searching
+for Loob, whom they soon found and bearing their strange trophies on
+their spear-heads they went on. The monsters, clinging sullenly to
+their perches, rolled baleful eyes of emerald and rose and amethyst
+upon them as they went, but lifted never a wing to follow them. Ten
+minutes later the sun came out again. Then the monsters all sprang
+hurtling into the air, and darted hither and thither above the glade
+in shoals of iridescent radiance, seeking their prey. But Grom and
+A-ya, Mo and Loob triumphant in spite of their wounds, were by this
+time far away among the inland thickets, where those intolerable eyes
+could 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 the
+caves and the cave-mouth fires of his people, Grom stared northward
+with keen curiosity. To east and south and west he had explored, ever
+seeking to enlarge the knowledge and strengthen the security of his
+tribe. But to northward of the pointed hills lay league on league of
+profound jungle--grotesque and enormous growths knitted together
+impenetrably by a tangle of gigantic, flame-flowered lianas. And in
+those rank, green glooms, as Grom had reason to believe, there lurked
+such monsters as even he, with all his resources of fire and novel
+weapons, 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 gently
+rounded, and of a smoky purple against the pure turquoise sky. These
+hills Grom was thirsting to explore. They might contain caves more
+roomy than those of his own hills--spacious and suitable to give
+shelter to his tribe, which was now finding itself somewhat cramped.
+Moreover, it had always seemed to Grom that there might be a mystery
+behind those hills, and to his restless imagination a mystery was
+always like a stinging goad.
+
+In all this neighborhood the crust of earth was thin as plainly
+appeared from the fringe of wavering volcanic flames which, during all
+the five years since the coming of the tribe, had been dancing from
+the lip of the narrow fissure across the mouth of their valley. Night
+and day, now high and vehement, now low and faint, they had danced
+there, guarding the valley entrance--until just one moon ago. Then had
+come an earthquake, shaking the hearts of all the tribe to water. The
+dancing flames had died. The fissure had closed up, and its place had
+been taken by a pool of boiling pitch. And one of the caves had fallen
+in, burying several members of the tribe, who had been too stupefied
+with panic to flee into the open at the first alarm. For some days
+after this catastrophe the tribe had camped in the open, huddled about
+their great fires. Then, but with deep misgivings, they had all
+crowded back into the remaining caves.
+
+But now there was not room enough, and Bawr, the wise Chief, had taken
+frequent counsel upon the matter with Grom, whom, loving him greatly
+he called sometimes his Right Hand and sometimes the Eye of the
+People. At last, it had been settled that Grom should lead a party
+through the jungle land to those other hills, to spy out the prospect.
+And Grom, like the foresighted leader that he was, had spent many
+hours on the mountain-top, planning his route and studying the
+luxuriant surface of the jungle outstretched below him, before
+plunging into its mysterious depths.
+
+As was his custom when on a perilous venture, Grom would have few
+followers to share the peril with him. He took A-ya, not only because
+of her oft-proved courage and resourcefulness, not only because he
+wanted her always at his side, but, above all, because he knew he
+could not leave her behind. Had he tried to leave her, she would have
+disobeyed and followed him by stealth--and perhaps fallen a prey to
+prowling beasts. He took also A-ya's young brother, the hot-head Mo;
+and Loob, the shaggy, little sharp-faced scout, who could run like a
+hare, hide like a fox, and fight like a cornered weasel. This he would
+have accounted, ordinarily, a sufficient party. But the present
+enterprise being one of peculiar difficulty, he decided at the last
+moment to strengthen his following by the addition of a dark-faced,
+perpetually-grinning giant named Hobbo, who was slow of wit, but
+thewed like a bull, and a mighty fighter with the stone-headed club.
+
+This little but greatly daring band, which Grom, one flaming sunrise,
+led down into the unknown jungle, was well armed. Besides the spear
+and the club, each member of the party but Hobbo (who had displayed no
+aptitude for its use) carried Grom's wonderful invention--the bow.
+Hobbo, however, because of his immense strength, bore the heavy
+fire-basket, wherein the smoldering coals were cherished in a bed of
+clay. As a food reserve, everyone carried a few strips of half-dried
+meat; but their main dependence, of course, was to be upon the spoils
+of their hunting and the fruits that they might gather on their
+march.
+
+The forest into whose depths Grom now led the way was in reality a
+survival from a previous age, into which the forms, both vegetable and
+animal, of contemporary life had been gradually infiltrating. The
+soil, of incredible fertility, still poured forth those gigantic tree
+grasses, and colossal, sappy ferns and psuedo-palms, which had
+flourished chiefly in the carboniferous period. But here they were
+mingled with the more enduring hard-wood growths of the later tropical
+forests; and only these were strong enough to support the massive,
+strangling coils of the cable-like lianas, which wound their way up
+the huge trunks and reached out in aerial, swaying bridges from
+tree-top to tree-top. On every side, high or low, the deep-green gloom
+was splashed with color from the gorgeous orchids and other epiphytes,
+which flowered out into grotesque or monstrous wing-petaled shapes of
+vermilion and purple and orange and rose and white, eyed with velvet
+black or streaked with iridescent bronze.
+
+To men of to-day this jungle would have been impenetrable, except by
+the incessant use of axe or machete. But Grom and his party were
+Cave-Men, and had not yet forgotten all the instincts and capacities
+of their tree-dwelling ancestors. Sometimes, where it seemed easiest,
+they forced their way along the ground, or followed the trodden trail
+of 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 by
+creatures whose monstrous tracks were unlike any that they had ever
+seen before. Whenever possible, therefore, they preferred to journey,
+after the fashion of their apish ancestors, by way of the high
+branches and the liana bridges. Hampered as they were by their
+weapons, their progress by this aerial way was slow. But it was
+comparatively secure. And it was also comparatively cool; while down
+at the ground-level the steaming heat and the stinging insects were
+almost beyond endurance.
+
+Yet before the end of that first day's journey they learned that even
+in tree-tops it was necessary to be always on the watch. Once the
+little hairy scout, Loob, who traveled always on the outskirts of the
+party, was struck at suddenly by a huge black leopard, which lay
+ambushed in the crotch of a tree. Loob, however, who was so
+quick-sighted that he seemed to see things before they actually
+happened, leapt to a higher branch in time to escape the deadly
+paw. In the next instant he struck down furiously with his spear,
+catching his assailant between the shoulder-blades and driving the
+stroke home with all his strength. With a screech, the beast stiffened
+out, and then, somewhat slowly, collapsed. As Loob wrenched his
+weapon free, the great animal slumped limply from its branch. For a
+moment or two it hung by the fore-paws, coughing and frothing at
+the mouth. Then this last hold relaxed and it fell, bumping with a
+curious deliberation from branch to branch. It vanished through a
+floor of thick leafage, and struck the ground with a dull crash. It
+must have fallen under the very jaws of an unseen waiting monster; for
+there arose at once a strange, hooting roar, followed by the sound
+of rending flesh and cracking bone. Loob grinned over his feat,
+and Grom, glancing at A-ya, muttered quietly: "It is better to be up
+here than down there." As he spoke, and they all peered downwards,
+a dreadful head, with the limp body of the leopard gripped like a
+rat between its long jaws and dripping yellow fang, thrust itself
+up through the floor of leafage and stared at them with round eyes
+as cold and black as ice.
+
+Grom itched to shoot an arrow into one of those unwinking, devilish
+eyes. But arrows were too precious to be wasted.
+
+That night they slept profoundly on a platform which they wove of
+branches in one of the tallest and most unscalable trees. They kept
+watch, of course, turn and turn about; but nothing attempted to
+approach them, and they cared little for the sounds of strife, the
+crashings of pursuit and desperate flight, which came up to them at
+intervals from the blackness far below.
+
+On the morrow, however, as they were pursuing their aerial path along
+the borders of a narrow, sluggish bayou, they were suddenly made to
+realize that the tree-tops held perils more deadly than that of the
+lurking leopards. They were all staring down into the water, which
+swarmed with gigantic crocodiles and boiled immediately beneath them
+with the turmoil of a life-and-death struggle between two of the
+brutes, when harsh jabbering in the branches just across the water
+made them look up.
+
+The tree-tops opposite were full of great apes, mowing and gibbering
+at them with every sign of hate. The beasts were as big and massive as
+Hobbo himself, and covered thickly with long, blackish fur. Their
+faces, half human, half dog-like, were hairless and of a bright but
+bilious blue, with great livid red circles about the small, furious
+eyes. With derisive gestures they swung themselves out upon the
+overhanging branches, till it almost seemed as if they would hurl
+themselves into the water in their rage against the little knot of
+human beings.
+
+The girl A-ya, overcome with loathing horror because the beasts were
+so hideous a caricature of man, covered her eyes with one hand. Young
+Mo, his fiery temper stung by their challenge, clapped an arrow to his
+string and raised his bow to shoot. But Grom checked him sternly,
+dreading to fix any thirst of vengeance in the minds of the terrible
+troop.
+
+"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 the
+bayou, the apes kept pace with them on the other side. But presently
+the bayou widened, and then swept sharply off to the west. Grom kept
+on straight to the north, by the route which he had planned. And the
+mad gibbering died away into the hot, green silence of the tree-tops.
+
+The adventurers now pushed on with redoubled speed, unwilling to pass
+another night in the tree-tops when such dangerous antagonists were in
+the neighborhood. The hills, however, were still far off when evening
+came again. Not knowing that the great apes always slept at night,
+Grom decided to continue the journey in order to lessen the risk of a
+surprise. When the moon rose, round and huge and honey-colored, over
+the sea of foliage, traveling through the tree-tops was almost as easy
+as by day, while the earth below them, with its prowling and battling
+monsters, was buried in inky gloom. When day broke, there were the
+rounded hills startlingly close ahead, as if they had crept forward to
+meet 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 jungle
+lay an expanse of open, grassy savannah, dotted with ponds, and
+here and there a curious, solitary, naked tree-trunk, with what
+looked like a bunch of grass on its top. They were like gigantic
+green paint-brushes, with yellow-gray handles, stuck up at random.
+Far off they saw a herd of curious beasts at pasture, and away to
+the left a giant bird, as tall as the tree by which it stood, seemed
+to keep watch. A little to the right, where the treeless ridge came
+abruptly to an end, gleamed a considerable stretch of water. It was
+toward this point, where the water washed the steep-shouldered
+promontory, that Grom decided to shape his course across the plain.
+
+By the time the sun was some three hours high they had arrived within
+a 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 were
+more familiar, they were swinging on through the tree-tops at a great
+pace, when that savage, snarling jabber which they so dreaded was
+heard in the branches behind them. Grom instantly put A-ya in the
+lead, while he himself dropped to the rear to meet this deadliest of
+perils. There was no need to urge his party to haste; but it seemed to
+them all as if they were standing still, so swiftly did the clamor of
+the apes come upon them.
+
+"Down to earth," ordered Grom sharply, seeing that they must be
+overtaken before they could reach the open, and realizing that in the
+tree-tops they could not hope to match these four-handed dwellers of
+the trees.
+
+As they dropped nimbly from branch to branch, the foremost of the apes
+arrived in sight, set up a screech of triumph, and came swooping down
+after them in vast, swinging leaps. In the hurry Hobbo dropped his
+fire-basket, which broke as it fell and scattered the precious coals.
+Grom, guarding the rear of the flight, made the mistake of keeping his
+eye too much on the enemy, too little on where he was going. In a
+moment or two, he found himself cut off, upon a branch from which
+there was no escape without a drop of twenty feet to a most uncertain
+foothold. Rather than risk it, he ran in upon his nearest assailant at
+the base of the branch, thrusting at the blue-faced beast with his
+spear. But his position being so insecure, his thrust lacked force and
+precision. The great ape caught it deftly; and Grom, to preserve his
+balance, had to let the spear be wrenched from his hand. At the same
+moment another ape dropped on the branch behind him.
+
+For just one second Grom thought his hour had come. He crouched to
+steady himself, then darted forward and hurled his club straight at
+his foe's protruding and shaggy paunch. Again the beast caught the
+missile in its lightning clutch; but in the next instant it threw up
+its 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 bow
+and shot upwards with sure aim. The shaft had caught the great ape
+under the center of the jaw, far back at the throat, and pierced
+straight 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 Grom swung himself to the ground. As he reached it both
+Mo and Loob discharged their arrows. Another ape fell from his perch,
+but caught himself on a lower branch and hung there writhing; while a
+third, with a shaft half buried in his paunch, fled back yelling into
+the tree-top. Then the adventurers snatched up their fallen weapons
+from the ground and made for the open as fast as they could run. And
+the apes, with a hellish uproar of barks and screams, came swarming
+after them through the lower branches.
+
+At this point, fortunately for the travelers, the jungle was already
+thinning, and they had a chance to show their speed. The raging
+blue-faces were speedily distanced, and the fugitives ran out
+breathless upon the sunny savannah. Here, feeling themselves safe,
+they halted to look back. The lower branches all along the edge of the
+grass were thronged with leaping brown forms, and gnashing blue masks,
+and red-rimmed, devilish eyes. But not one of the great beasts, for
+all their rage, seemed willing to venture forth into the open.
+
+"There must be something out here that they fear greatly," commented
+Grom, peering warily about him. But there was nothing in sight to
+suggest any danger, and he led the way onward through the rank grass
+at a long, leisurely trot.
+
+
+II
+
+For the most part the grass grew hardly waist high; but here and there
+were patches, perhaps an acre or so in extent, where it was more cane
+than grass and rose to a height of twelve or fifteen feet. To such
+patches, which might serve as lurking-places to unknown monsters, Grom
+gave a wide berth. He had a vivid remembrance of that colossal head,
+with the awful dead eyes, which had reared itself through the leafage
+to stare up at him.
+
+In spite of the strange and enormous trails which crossed their path
+at times; in spite of occasional massive swayings and crashings in the
+deep beds of cane, the adventurous party accomplished the journey
+across the savannah without encountering a single foe. The mid-noon
+blaze of the sun upon the windless grass, which was almost more than
+they could endure, was probably keeping the monsters to their lairs;
+and the only living things to be seen, besides the insects and a
+high-wheeling vulture or two, were a few shy troops of a kind of small
+antelope, incredibly swift of foot.
+
+Grom 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 high
+limestone downs, they were fringed at this point by an unbroken line
+of cliff, perpendicular and at times overhanging, from forty or fifty
+to perhaps a couple of hundred feet in height, and so smooth that even
+these goat-footed cave-folk could not scale them. The rich plain-land
+at their feet had once been a shallow, inland sea, and now its grasses
+washed along their base in a gold-green, scented foam.
+
+Turning to the right, Grom led the way close along the cliff-foot
+toward the water, which glowed like brass about a mile ahead. Along
+the right of their path the ground sloped off gently to a belt of that
+high cane-like growth which Grom regarded with such suspicion. Before
+they had gone many hundred yards his suspicion was more than
+justified.
+
+From a little way behind them there arose all at once a chorus of
+explosive gruntings, mixed with a huge crashing of the canes. Glancing
+over their shoulders, they saw a great rust-red animal, about the size
+of a rhinoceros, which burst forth from the canes and stood staring
+after them. Its hideous head was larger than that of any rhinoceros
+they 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 keen
+point. Set side by side, at a moderate angle, upon the bridge of the
+snout, they were far more terrible than the horns of any rhinoceros.
+Their bearer lowered them menacingly, and charged down upon Grom's
+party with a sound that was something between the grunting of a hog
+and the braying of an ass. Immediately upon his massive heels a whole
+herd of the red monsters surged forth from the canes, and came
+charging after their leader at a ponderous gallop which seemed
+literally to shake the earth.
+
+For a moment or two Grom's party had paused, confident in their own
+fleetness of foot, and wondering at that pair of amazing horns on the
+monster's snout. But when the rest of the terrific herd came
+thundering down upon them, they fled in all haste. To their amazement,
+they found that their speed was none too great for their need. The red
+monsters, in spite of their bulk, were disconcertingly swift.
+
+As he neared the swift promontory which terminated with the range of
+downs, Grom began to fear that he and his followers would have to take
+refuge in the water. This water, as it chanced, was the brackish
+estuary of a river which, sweeping down from the east, here made its
+way to the sea through a long, slanting break in the limestone hills.
+It was now near low tide, and there opened before the hard-pressed
+fugitives, as they approached the shore, a strip of damp beach running
+around the base of the bluff. As they left the grass and ran out upon
+the beach they were astonished to find that the thundering pursuit had
+stopped short. Just at the turn of the cliff they halted and stared
+back wonderingly. Their pursuers, though swinging their great horns
+and braying with rage, were evidently unwilling to venture so near the
+waterside. They drew back, indeed, as if they feared it, and at last
+went crashing away into the canes. The fugitives, glad of an
+opportunity to rest their laboring lungs, squatted down with their
+backs against the cliff and congratulated themselves on having got rid
+of such perilous attentions. But Grom's sagacious eyes searched the
+cliff face anxiously, without neglecting to watch the unruffled water.
+If that water was so dreaded that even the mighty herd of their
+pursuers durst not approach it, surely its smiling surface must hide
+some peril of surpassing horror.
+
+For the next few hundred yards, till it vanished around the curve, the
+strip of naked beach was not more than twenty or thirty feet in width.
+Not without some apprehensions, Grom decided to push forward. There
+seemed nothing else to do, indeed, seeing that the cane-beds behind
+them were occupied by that irresistible red herd. Somewhere ahead, he
+argued, there must be a break in the cliff which would give access to
+the rolling downs above, where they might travel in safety.
+
+Disguising his growing uneasiness that he might not discourage his
+followers--who were now full of elation at having reached the foot of
+the hills--he led on again in haste, though there seemed to be no need
+of haste. Both Hobbo and young Mo, indeed, were for staying a while
+and sleeping in the shade of an overhanging rock. But A-ya, who sensed
+through sympathy her lord's disquietude, and the little scout Loob,
+who was always, on principle, ill at ease in any spot where there was
+no tree to climb, were as eager as their chief to push ahead; and the
+others would never have dared, in any case, to question Grom's
+decision.
+
+As they rounded the next bend of the cliff, however, a clamor of
+excited satisfaction arose from all the party. Straight ahead, and not
+fifty paces distant, there opened before them a spacious cave-mouth,
+with a somewhat wider strip of beach before it. Immediately beyond the
+cave the strip of beach came sharply to an end, and the tide lapped
+softly against the foot of the cliff.
+
+But just then, in the moment of their elation, a terrifying thing
+happened. As if aroused by their voices, the still surface a few yards
+from shore boiled up, and was lashed to foam by the strokes of a
+gigantic tail.
+
+"Run!" yelled Grom; and they all dashed forward, there being no chance
+to go back. In the same instant, an appalling head--like that of a
+thrice magnified and distorted crocodile, with vast, round, painted
+eyes--was upthrust from the water and came rushing after them at a
+pace which sent up a curving wave before it.
+
+Quick as thought, Grom drew his bow and shot at the appalling head.
+The arrow drove straight into the gaping throat, eliciting a
+thunderous bellow of rage, but producing no other effect. Then Grom
+sprang after his fleeing companions, and raced for his life toward the
+cave mouth. The cave might be nothing more than a death-trap for them
+all; but it seemed to offer the one possibility of escape.
+
+As they dashed into the cave the awful, gaping head was close behind
+them. They had a flashing glimpse, through the gloom, of high-arched
+distance melting into blackness, of a strip of black water along the
+right, and to the left a gentle ascent of smooth white sand, whose end
+was out of sight.
+
+Up this slope they raced, with the clashing of monstrous fangs close
+behind them. But they had not gone a dozen strides when the slope
+quivered, and heaved upwards shudderingly beneath them; and they all
+fell forward flat upon their faces. From all but Grom there went up a
+shriek so piercing that in their own ears it disguised the stupendous
+rending roar which at that moment seemed to stun the air. The mighty
+arch of the cave mouth had slipped and crashed down, completely
+jamming the entrance, and opening up a gash of blue heaven above their
+heads.
+
+To Grom's unshaken wits, it was clear on the instant what had
+happened. He staggered to his feet and looked back through a rain of
+falling rock-splinters. He had a vision of their colossal pursuer, its
+jaws stretched to their utmost width, the vast globes of its eyes
+protruding from their armored sockets, its ponderous, bowed fore-legs
+pawing the air aimlessly in the final convulsion. The falling
+rock-mass had caught it on the middle of the back, crushing its mighty
+frame like an eggshell.
+
+For a second or two, Grom stood there rigid, staring, his gnarled
+fingers clenched upon his weapons. Then a second earthquake tremor
+beneath his feet warned him. With an unerring instinct, he sprang on
+up the slope after his companions, who had fled as soon as they could
+pick themselves up. And in the next moment the rock above his head,
+fissured deep by the rains, slipped again. With a growling screech, as
+if torn from the bowels of the mountain, it settled slowly down, and
+sealed the mouth of the cave to utter blackness.
+
+Grom stopped short, having no mind to dash out his brains against the
+rock. There was stillness at last, and silence save for the faint,
+humming moan of the earthquake which seemed to come from vast depths
+beneath his feet. Profoundly awed, but master of his spirit, he stood
+leaning upon his spear in the thick dark till the last of that strange
+humming note had died away. Then, through a silence so thick it seemed
+to choke him, he called aloud:
+
+"A-ya! where are you?"
+
+"_Grom!_" 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 in
+the darkness they had not dared to rise again, but lay waiting for
+their 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. Without
+Grom, they would probably have died where they were, not daring to
+stir in the darkness. But their faith in their chief kept them
+cheerful even in this desperate plight.
+
+"We must find a way out," answered Grom, with resolute confidence.
+
+"If Hobbo had not dropped the fire!" said young Mo bitterly.
+
+The giant groaned in self-abasement, and beat his chest with his great
+fists. But Grom, 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 Grom, sitting there
+in 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 in
+that last instant of daylight, that the entrance was blocked
+impregnably. Moreover, he judged that any attempt to work an
+opening in that direction would be likely, for the present, to bring
+more rocks down upon them. It would be better, first, to feel their
+way on into the cave in the hope of finding another exit. He was
+not afraid of getting lost, no matter how absolute the dark, because
+he possessed that sixth sense, so long ago vanished from modern
+man's equipment--the sense of direction. He knew that, as a matter of
+course, he could find his way back to this starting-point whenever
+he would.
+
+"Come on!" he ordered at last, lifting A-ya and holding her hand in
+his grasp. Reaching out with his spear, he kept tapping the ground
+before him as he went, and occasionally the wall upon his left.
+Sometimes, too, he would reach upwards to assure himself that there
+was 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 fair
+progress, even though unaided by their eyes. But Grom checked his
+advance abruptly. He had a perception of some obstacle before him. He
+reached out his spear as far as he could. It touched a soft object.
+The object, whatever it was, surged violently beneath the touch. His
+flesh crept, and the shaggy hair uplifted on his neck. "Back!" he
+hissed, thrusting A-ya off to arm's length and bracing his spear point
+before him to receive the expected attack. A pair of faintly
+phosphorescent eyes, small, but so wide apart as to show that their
+owner's head must have been enormous, flashed round upon them. There
+was a hoarse squeal of alarm, and a heavy body went floundering off
+into the water. They could hear it swimming away in hot haste.
+
+Every one drew a long breath. Then, after a few moments, A-ya laughed
+softly:
+
+"It's good to find something at last that runs away from us instead of
+after us!" said she.
+
+A little further on the cave wall turned to the left. A few steps, and
+their path came to an end. There was water ahead of them, and on both
+sides. Grom's exploring spear assured them that it was deep water.
+
+"We must swim," said he. "Leave your clubs behind." And leading the
+way down into the unknown tide, he struck out straight ahead.
+
+It was nerve-testing work swimming thus through that unseen water to
+an unguessed goal; but Grom was unhesitating, and his companions
+rested upon his steady will. The water was of a summer warmth, and
+slightly salt, which convinced him that it had free communication with
+the sunlit tides outside. Several times he came within touch of the
+rocky walls of the cavern, and found that they went straight down to a
+depth he could not guess. But he kept on with hope and confidence at a
+leisurely pace, which, in that bland and windless flood, he knew that
+every member of his party could have maintained for half a day.
+
+Suddenly there appeared ahead of them a faint, bluish gleam upon the
+water's surface. It was something elusive and unreal, and vaguely
+menacing.
+
+"Daylight!" exclaimed young Mo eagerly. But Grom said nothing. He did
+not think it was daylight, and he was apprehensive of some new peril.
+
+The strange light grew and spread. It was evident now that it rose
+from the water, and also that it was advancing rapidly to meet the
+astonished swimmers. After a few moments it was bright enough in its
+blue pallor to show the swimmers that they were traversing a vast hall
+of waters, whose roof was lost in darkness. Some fifty yards ahead of
+them, and a little to the right, a low spit of rock, half awash for
+the greater part of its length, ran out slantingly from the wall of
+the stupendous chamber.
+
+Toward this ledge Grom now led the way, hurling himself through the
+water on his side at top speed. He could not fathom this mysterious
+phosphorescence, and he wished to get his people out upon dry land
+before it reached them. But fast as the adventurers swam, the ghostly
+radiance spread faster. Before they got to the ledge, the light was
+all about them; but it seemed to be coming from a great depth.
+
+Nervously they all glanced down, and a low cry of horror broke from
+their lips. The depths were swarming with monstrous, luminous forms, a
+moon-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 that
+froze even Grom's blood. They seemed innumerable, and all together
+they came suddenly floating upwards.
+
+Already the fugitives were dragging themselves out upon the ledge, in
+frantic haste, when the diabolical swarm reached the surface. But
+Hobbo, who was the slowest swimmer, was merely clutching at the rock
+when the water boiled all about him in a froth of light. A pair of
+huge, pincer-like claws seized him by the neck, and another pair by
+one arm, plucking him back. His convulsed face stared upward for an
+instant, and then, with a choked scream, he was dragged under. He
+disappeared in a swirl of pale blue, frantically waving claws, and
+eyes, and feelers, and black-fringed, chopping mouths.
+
+Beside himself with rage and horror, Grom stabbed down wildly into the
+whirling struggle, and his example was followed at once by Loob and
+young Mo. Some of their random blows went home, and as one or another
+of the gigantic crabs turned over in its death-throes, its nearest
+fellows seized it, tore it to pieces, and devoured it.
+
+But A-ya, who had taken no part in this vengeance, now snatched Grom
+by the arm, shrieking wildly:
+
+"Look! They are coming out!"
+
+Recovering their senses, the three half-maddened men stared about
+them. On every side the gigantic crabs--some with claws eight or ten
+feet long, and eyes upon the ends of long waving stalks--were crawling
+up upon the ledge.
+
+The ledge, fortunately, was of some width. At its landward end it rose
+into a mass of tumbled rocks perhaps twenty or thirty feet above the
+water. 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 their
+terrible mailed claws. Over and over again one or another of the party
+was seized by the foot or the leg; but his companions would beat the
+long, jointed limb to fragments, or drive their spear-points deep into
+the awful, drooling mouth, and set him free.
+
+At last, bleeding from many wounds, they reached the end of the ledge
+and clambered to the top. Here but three or four of the giant
+crustaceans tried to follow them. These were easily speared from
+above, and hurled back disabled among their ravening kin. And the
+whole swarm, apparently forgetting their intended victims as soon as
+they were out of reach, fell to fighting hideously among themselves
+over the convulsed bodies of these wounded. The lower portion of the
+ledge, and the water all about it, was a crawling mass of horror that
+seemed to froth with blue light. And a confused noise of crackling,
+snapping and hissing arose from it.
+
+Every eye but Grom's was glued in fascination to the baleful scene.
+But Grom now thought only of using that pervasive light to best
+advantage while it should last. The wall of the cavern at this point
+was so broken and fissured that it was not unscalable; and a little
+way off to the right he marked, at some height above the water, what
+looked 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, now
+clinging by fingers and toes to almost imperceptible projections, they
+made their way across the face of the steep, and gained the mouth of
+the gallery. It was spacious, and easy to traverse, its floor sloping
+upwards somewhat steeply. They plunged into it with confidence. And
+the 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. Then
+a 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 deer
+pasturing among scattered trees by the shore. Away behind them
+undulated the gracious line of the downs, inviting their feet.
+
+"It is a pleasant land," said Grom, "and we will surely come back to
+it. 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 from
+their earthquake-harassed valley and betaken themselves to the new
+dwelling-place which Grom had found for them, on the green hill-slope
+beside the Bitter Waters. They had lost no time, however, in accepting
+the new conditions; for these caves in the limestone were ample and
+secure--it was hard for any invader to come at them save by way of the
+long, bare ridge of the downs running westward behind the caves; a
+sweet-water brook ran almost past their threshold to fall with a
+pleasant clamor into the bay,--and the surrounding country was rich in
+game. The vast basin of marshy plain and colossal jungle, to be sure,
+which stretched and steamed below the downs to southward, was the
+habitation of strange monsters; but these, apparently, had no taste
+for exploring the high, clean, windy downs.
+
+On a certain golden morning it chanced that the caves were well-nigh
+deserted. The men of the tribe, including the chiefs themselves, Bawr
+and Grom, together with most of the women and the half-grown children,
+had gone off down the shore to a shallow inlet five or six miles
+distant to gather shell-fish--great luscious mussels and peculiarly
+plump and savory whelks. The girl A-ya, absorbed in her special
+occupation of fashioning bows and arrows for the tribe, had remained,
+with a half-score of old men and women and Grom's giant slave, the
+lame Bow-leg, Ook-ootsk, to guard the little children and the tribal
+fires. As Grom's mate, and his confidential associate in all his
+greatest ventures, A-ya's prestige in the tribe had come to be only
+less than that of Bawr and Grom themselves.
+
+On the open, grassy level before the cave mouth, the two great fires
+burned steadily in the sun. The giant Ook-ootsk, hideous with his
+ape-like forehead, his upturned, flaring nostrils, his protruding jaw,
+his shaggy, clay-colored torso, and his short, massive, grotesquely
+bowed legs--of which one was twisted so that the toes pointed almost
+backwards--lay sprawling and chuckling benevolently near the entrance,
+while a swarm of little ones, A-ya's two among them, clambered over
+him. 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 gnarled
+fingers in twisting thin strips of hide into bow-strings, or lashing
+slivers of stone into the heads of spears. A-ya sat cross-legged a
+little apart, beside a tiny fire, laboriously fashioning her bows and
+arrows by charring the wood in the embers and then rubbing it between
+two 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 from
+time to time she shook them aside impatiently. It was a picture of
+primeval peace.
+
+But peace, in the days when earth was young, was something more
+precarious than a bubble.
+
+From around the green shoulder of the hill came a sound of trampling
+hooves and labored breathing. A-ya sprang to her feet, snatching up
+her own well-tried bow and fitting an arrow to the string. At the same
+time she gave a sharp alarm-cry, at which the lame slave, Ook-ootsk,
+arose, shaking off the swarm of children, and came hobbling towards
+her with his weapons in both hands. An old woman pounced upon the
+startled, wide-eyed children, and in a twinkling had them shepherded
+into the cave-mouth, out of sight. The old men, springing from their
+sleep, and blinking, hurried forth into the sunlight, with such spears
+or 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 eyes
+showing the whites with terror, its dilated nostrils spattering bloody
+froth. A long, raking wound ran scarlet down one flank. Staggering
+from weariness or loss of blood, it came on straight toward the
+cave-mouth, so blinded by its terror that it seemed not to see the
+human creatures awaiting it, or even the fires before them.
+
+A-ya fetched a deep breath of relief when she saw that this was no
+ravening monster. Her immediate thought was the hunter's thought. She
+drew her bow to the full length of her shaft, and as the panting beast
+went by she let drive. The arrow pierced to half its span, just behind
+the straining fore-shoulder. Blood burst from the animal's nostrils.
+It fell on its knees, struggled up again, blundered on for half a
+dozen 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 from
+the fire. But a look of apprehension and warning in the keen little
+eyes of Ook-ootsk, who had by this time hobbled to her side, checked
+her. In a flash the meaning of it came to her.
+
+"What do you suppose was chasing it, Ook-ootsk?" she queried; and
+whipped about, without waiting for his answer, to stare anxiously at
+the 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 the
+string of his massive bow.
+
+But the words were hardly out of his throat, when his guess was proved
+wrong. Around the turn came lumbering, with huge heads hung low and
+slavering, half-open jaws a pair of those colossal red bears of the
+caves which had always been A-ya's peculiar terror.
+
+"Hide the children!" she yelled, and then let fly an arrow, almost
+without aim, at the foremost of the monsters. She was the best shot in
+the tribe, and the shaft sped even too true. It struck the bear full
+in the snout, and pierced through the palate and into the throat--a
+wound which, though likely to prove mortal after a time, only made the
+beast more dangerous for the moment. It paused, coughing, and tried to
+paw the torment from its jaws, and then rushed forward, screaming
+hideously.
+
+In that pause, however, though it was but for a second or two, the
+second bear had forged ahead of its companion. It was greeted
+instantly by an arrow from the massive bow of Ook-ootsk, aimed with
+cool deliberation. The long shaft of hickory, delivered thus at close
+range, caught the enemy in the front of the right shoulder and drove
+clean in to the joint, so that the leg gave way and the gigantic brute
+almost fell upon its side. With a roar, it bit off the protruding half
+of the tough hickory, and then came on again, on three legs. From
+A-ya's nimble bow it got another arrow, which went half-way through
+its neck; but to this deadly wound, which sent the blood gushing from
+its 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, she
+snatched up her stone-headed spear and ran around behind the nearest
+fire, expecting the bears to follow her and be led away from the
+hiding-place of the children.
+
+But she had forgotten that the slave, Ook-ootsk, with his twisted and
+shrunken leg, could not run. That valiant savage, blinking his little
+eyes rapidly and blowing defiantly through his upturned nostrils as he
+saw his doom rushing upon him, let drive one more of his long shafts
+into the red, towering bulk, then dropped his bow, sank upon one knee,
+and held up his spear slantingly before him, with its butt firmly
+braced upon the ground. As the monster reared itself and fell upon
+him, 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 the
+paroxysm of its amazement and agony, leapt onward and plunged right
+over him, involuntarily hurling him aside and clawing most of the
+flesh off his back with a kick of one gigantic hind paw.
+
+He clenched his teeth stoically, shut his eyes, folded his long, hairy
+arms about his head, and rolled himself into a ball, confidently
+expecting in the next moment to feel the life crunched out of him.
+
+But just as the monster, recovering itself, was turning madly to
+finish off its insignificant but torturing opponent, A-ya came leaping
+back to the rescue, with a blazing and sparkling faggot in each hand,
+and the old men, some with fire-brands, some with spears, clamoring
+resolutely behind her. With fearless dexterity, she thrust the fire
+straight into the monster's eyeballs, totally blinding him. As he
+wheeled to strike her down, she slipped aside with a mocking laugh,
+and threw one of the brands between his jaws, where he crunched upon
+it savagely before he felt the torment of it and spat it out.
+
+Depending now upon his ears, the monster blundered straight forward in
+the direction of the shouting voices. He had quite forgotten
+Ook-ootsk. He raged to come at this last intolerable foe, who had
+scorched the light from his eyes. He made for her voice straight
+enough; but it chanced that exactly in his path lay the second
+fire--that into which the body of the elk had fallen. Already too
+maddened with the anguish of his wounds to notice the fire at
+once, 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 up
+derisively about his head; till at length the flames were drawn deep
+into his laboring lungs, searing them and sealing them so that they
+could no more perform their office. With a shallow, screeching gasp he
+threw himself backwards out of the fire, rolled upon the turf, and
+lay there fighting the air with his paws as he strangled swiftly and
+convulsively.
+
+The second bear, meanwhile, wallowing with astonishing nimbleness on
+three legs, had charged roaring into the group of old men. In a
+twinkling he had three or four spears sticking into him; but the arms
+that hurled the spears were weak, and the monster ramped on unheeding.
+Several fire-brands fell upon him, scorching his long, red fur, but he
+shook them off, too maddened to remember his natural dread of the
+flames.
+
+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 to
+thrust his blazing faggot into the monster's eyes, as she had done. He
+was not quick enough. The monster threw up its muzzle, dodging the
+stroke, and the next moment it had struck down its feeble adversary
+and crushed his head between its tremendous jaws.
+
+In its folly, it now forgot its other enemies, and fell to wreaking
+its madness on the lifeless victim. But in another second or two it
+was fairly overwhelmed with the red brands descending upon its head.
+A-ya, with all the force of her strong young arms, drove her short
+spear half-way through its loins. Then, with one eye blinded and its
+long fur smouldering, its rage gave way suddenly into panic. Lifting
+its giant head high into the air, as if thus to escape its fiery
+assailants, it turned and scuttled back the way it had come, while the
+old men swarmed after it, belaboring and jabbing its elephantine rump
+with their live brands.
+
+A-ya, racing like a deer and screaming with exultation, ran round the
+pack of old men and stabbed the frantic brute in the neck, with her
+spear 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 at
+this point dropped about a hundred feet, almost perpendicularly, to
+the beach. Rolling over and over, and bouncing out into space every
+time he struck the cliff face he fell to the bottom amid a shower of
+stones and dust, and lay there as shapeless as a fur rug dropped from
+an upper window.
+
+The old men, jabbering in triumph, craned their shaggy gray heads out
+over the brink to grin down upon him, while A-ya, with a wild light in
+her eyes and her strong white teeth gleaming savagely, turned back to
+tend the wounds of her slave, Ook-ootsk.
+
+
+II
+
+Having assured herself that the hurts of Ook-ootsk, dreadful though
+they were, were yet not mortal (our sires of Cave and Tree took a lot
+of killing!), A-ya stepped over to the further fire to see about
+rescuing the carcase of the slain elk before it should be quite burned
+up. As a matter of fact, there was little of it actually consumed by
+the fire, but it was amazingly shredded by the clawing of the blinded
+bear; and an odor of roasted venison steamed up from it, which seemed
+rather pleasant to A-ya's nostrils. Under her direction, the old men
+hauled the body from the fire by the hind-legs, and dragged it over to
+the edge of the bluff before cutting it up, for convenience in getting
+rid of the offal. Every one followed, to secure their due share of the
+tit-bits, except Ook-ootsk and one old woman. This old woman sat
+rocking and keening beside the body of her mate whom the bear had
+slain; while Ook-ootsk crawled off into a neighboring hollow to look
+for certain healing herbs which should cleanse and astringe his
+wounds.
+
+The hide of the elk was too much burnt, too ripped and torn by the
+claws of the bear, to be of any use except for thongs; but the old men
+skinned it off expertly before dividing the flesh. Though their
+gnarled fingers were feeble, they were amazingly clever in the use of
+the sharp-edged flakes of stone which served them as knives. A-ya
+stood by them, watching closely, to see that none of the specially
+dainty cuts were appropriated. These delicacies were reserved for
+herself and her two children, and for Grom when he should return. She
+had the right to them, not only because she was the mate of Grom, but
+because the kill was hers.
+
+As she stood over the carcase--the fore-part of which had been
+superficially barbecued in the fire--the smell of the roasted flesh
+began to appeal to her even more strongly than at first. As she
+sniffed it, curiously, it began to entice her appetite as nothing had
+ever tempted it before. She touched a well-browned, fatty morsel, and
+then put her fingers into her mouth. The flavor seemed to her as
+delightful as the smell. She cast about for a suitable morsel on which
+to experiment.
+
+Now it chanced that the elk's tongue, having lain in the heart of the
+fire, but enclosed within the half-open jaws, had been cooked to a
+turn. A-ya possessed herself of this ever-coveted delicacy. It looked
+so 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 manners
+been greatly considered in the days when the earth was young, might
+have seemed unbecoming in the wife of a great chief. Never before had
+she eaten anything that seemed to her half so delicious. It was the
+food she had all her life been craving. Her two little boys, pulling
+at her, aroused her from her ecstasy. She gave them each a fragment,
+which they swallowed greedily, demanding more; and between the three
+of them the great lump of roast tongue quickly vanished.
+
+The rest of the crowd meanwhile had been looking on with instinctive
+disapproval. The portions of the meat which the fire had cooked, or
+partly cooked, seemed to them spoiled. A-ya might, indeed, like the
+strange food; but she was different from the rest of them in so many
+ways! When, however, they saw her two boys follow her example, and
+noted their enthusiasm, several of the old men ventured to try for
+themselves. They were instant converts. Last of all, the old women and
+the children--always the most conservative in such matters, took the
+notion that they were losing something, and dared to essay the novel
+diet. One taste, as a rule, proved enough to vanquish their
+prejudices. In a very few minutes every shred of the carcase that
+could claim acquaintance with the fire had been eaten, and all were
+clamoring 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 from
+the loin, had proved to be merely scorched on the outside, and she was
+disappointed. She stood fingering the raw mass with resentful
+aversion, while the old men and women, chattering gleefully and
+followed by the horde of children dragged the mangled carcase back to
+the fire, lifted it laboriously by all four legs, and managed to
+deposit it in the very midst of the flames. A shrill shout of triumph
+went up from the withered old throats at this achievement, and they
+all drew back to wait for the fire to do its wonderful work.
+
+But A-ya was impatient, and vaguely dissatisfied as she watched that
+crude roasting in the process. She stood brooding, eyeing the fire and
+turning her lump of raw flesh over and over in her hands. The attitude
+of body was one she had caught from Grom, when he was groping for a
+solution to some problem. And now it seemed as if she had caught his
+attitude of mind as well. Into her brain, for the moment passive and
+receptive, flashed an idea, she knew not whence. It was as if it had
+been whispered to her. She picked up a spear, jabbed its stone head
+firmly into the lump of meat, and thrust the meat into the edge of the
+fire, as far as it could go without burning the wood of the spear
+shaft.
+
+It took her a very few minutes to realize that her idea was nothing
+less than an inspiration. Moving the morsel backwards and forwards to
+keep it from charring, she found that it seemed to do best over a mass
+of hot coals rather than in a flame; and being a thin cut, it cooked
+quickly. When it was done she burnt her fingers with it, and her big
+red mouth as well; and her two boys, for whom she had torn off shreds
+too hot for herself to hold, danced up and down and wept loudly with
+the smart of it, to be instantly consoled by the savor.
+
+Noting the supreme success of A-ya's experiment, the spectators rushed
+in, dragged the carcase once more from the fire, and fell to hacking
+off suitable morsels, each for himself. In a few minutes every one who
+could get hold of a long arrow, or a spear, or a pointed stick, was
+busy learning to cook. Even the wailing old mourner, finding the
+excitement irresistible, forsook the body of her slain mate and came
+forward to take her share. Only the dead man, lying outstretched in
+the sun by the cave-door, and the crippled giant Ook-ootsk, away in
+the green hollow nursing his honorable wounds, had no part in the
+rejoicing, in this revel of the First Cooked Food. The hot meat
+juices, modified by the action of the fire, were almost as stimulating
+as alcohol in the veins of these simple livers, and the revel grew to
+something like an orgie as the shriveled nerves of the elders began to
+thrill with new life. A-ya, seeing the carcase of the elk melt away
+like new snow under a spring sun, gave orders to skin and cut up the
+body of the first bear.
+
+But the old men were too absorbed in their feasting to pay any
+attention to her orders; and she herself was too exhilarated and
+content to make any serious effort to enforce them. Every one, old and
+young alike, was sucking burnt fingers and radiating greasy, happy
+smiles, and she felt dimly that anything like discipline would be
+unpopular at such a moment.
+
+During all this excitement the main body of the tribe came straggling
+back along the beach from their hunting of whelks and mussels. At the
+foot of the bluff below the cave they found the body of the second
+bear, and gathered anxiously about it, clamoring over its spear-wounds
+and the arrows sticking in it, till Bawr and Grom, who were in the
+rear, came up. It was plain there had been a terrific battle at the
+Cave. With most of the warriors the two Chiefs dashed on and up the
+path, to find out how things had gone, while a handful remained behind
+to skin the bear and cut up the meat.
+
+When the anxious warriors arrived before the cave, they were amazed at
+the hilarity which they found there--and inclined, at first, to resent
+it, being something to which they had no clue. What were all the old
+fools doing, dancing and cackling about the fire, and wasting good
+meat by poking it into the fire on the ends of sticks and spears and
+arrows?
+
+The younger women, coming up behind the warriors, were derisive. They
+were always critical in their attitude towards A-ya--so far as they
+dared to be--and now they ran forward to scold and slap their
+respective children for putting this disgusting burnt meat into their
+mouths.
+
+To Grom and Bawr, however, A-ya explained the whole situation in a few
+pertinent phrases, and followed up her explanation by proffering them
+each 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 Grom, beaming upon her proudly and
+holding out his great hairy hand for another sample. But Bawr strode
+forward, thrust the old men aside, hacked himself off a generous
+collop, stuck it on his spear-head, and thrust it into the fire.
+
+In his impatience, Bawr kept pulling the roast out every minute or
+two, to taste it and see if it was done enough. His enthusiasm--and
+that of Grom, who was now following his example--cured the rest of the
+warriors of their hesitation, so effectually that in five minutes
+there 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 the
+bear, skinning it and hacking it in greedy haste. The young women,
+having satisfied convention by slapping their bewildered and
+protesting brats, soon yielded to curiosity and began surreptitiously
+to nibble at the greasy cooked morsels which they had confiscated.
+Then they, too, grabbed up spears and sticks for toasting-forks and
+came clamoring shrilly for their portions. And A-ya, standing a little
+apart with Grom, smiled with comprehending sarcasm at their
+conversion.
+
+For the next few hours the fires were surrounded each by a seething
+and squabbling mob, the innermost rings engaged in toasting their
+collops with one hand, while with the other they tried to shield their
+faces from the heat. As fast as those in the front rank wriggled out
+with their browned and juicy tit-bits, others battled in to take their
+places; and the Tribe of the Cave Men, mindful of nothing but the
+gratification of this new taste, feasted away the afternoon with such
+unanimous and improvident rejoicing as they had never known before. At
+last, radiant with gravy and repletion, they flung themselves down
+where they would and went to sleep, Bawr and Grom, and two or three
+others of the older warriors, who had been wise enough to banquet
+without gorging themselves, thought with some misgiving of what might
+happen 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 over
+the bay, honey-colored in a violet sky, and played fantastic tricks
+with the shifting light of the fires. And from within the cave came
+softly 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 of
+young hickory sprouts, on which they had depended for their shafts,
+was almost exhausted. And within a two days' journey of the Caves
+there was nothing to be found that would quite take the place of those
+hickory sprouts. Neither Grom himself nor any other member of his
+tribe had as yet succeeded in so fixing a tip of bone or flint to a
+shaft of cane as not to interfere with its penetration. Some growth
+must be found that was tough, perfectly straight, and tapering, while
+at the same time so solid and hard of grain that it would take and
+hold a point, and heavy enough for driving power. All this was
+difficult to find, and Grom was convinced that it must be sought for
+far afield. Life had been running uneventfully for months at the Great
+Caves, and Grom's restless spirit was craving new knowledge, new
+adventure.
+
+On this quest of the arrow Grom took with him only two companions--his
+slim, swift-footed mate, A-ya and that cunning little scout, Loob, the
+Hairy 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 off
+sharply to the south.
+
+Being bent upon exploring to the westward--though he was not very
+clear as to his reasons for his preference--Grom led the way down from
+the hills into the rankly wooded plain. For two days more they pushed
+on through incessant perils, the country swarming with black lions,
+saber-tooth, and woolly rhinoceros. As they were not fighting, but
+exploring, the price of safety was a vigilance so unremitting that it
+soon began to get on their nerves, and they were glad to take a whole
+day's rest in the spacious security of a banyan top, where nothing
+could come at them but leopards or pythons. Neither leopards nor
+pythons gave them any great concern.
+
+On the second day after quitting their refuge in the banyan top, they
+emerged from the jungle so suddenly that they nearly fell into a
+river, whose whitish, turbid flood ran swirling heavily before their
+feet. It was a mighty stream, a good half-mile in width, and at this
+point the current was eating away the bank so hungrily that whole
+ranks of tree and bush had toppled over into the tide.
+
+The great river barred their way, flowing as it did toward the
+north-east, and Grom reluctantly turned the course of the expedition
+southward, following up the shore. Swift as was the current, these
+folk of the Caves might have crossed it by swimming; but Grom knew
+that such waters were apt to swarm with giant crocodiles of varying
+type and unvarying ferocity, as well as with ferocious flesh-eating
+fish that swarmed in wolfish packs, and were able to tear an aurochs
+or a mastodon in pieces with their razor-edged teeth. He gazed
+desirously at the opposite shore, however--which looked to him much
+more beautiful and more interesting than that on which he stood--and
+wondered if he should ever be able to devise some way of reaching it
+other than by swimming.
+
+Along the river shore the travelers had endless variety to keep them
+interested, with a less exhausting imminence of peril than in the
+depths of the jungle. Sometimes great branches, draped and festooned
+with gorgeous-flowered lianas, thrust themselves far out over the
+water, affording easy refuge. Sometimes the river was bordered by a
+strip of grassy level, behind which ran the edge of the jungle in the
+form of a steep bank of violent green, with here and there a broad
+splotch of magenta or violet or orange bloom flung over it like a
+curtain. At times, again, it was necessary to plunge back into the
+humming and steaming gloom behind this resplendent screen, in order to
+make a detour around some swampy cove, whose dense growth of sedge,
+fifteen to twenty feet in height, was traversed by wide trails which
+showed it to be the abode of unfamiliar monsters. The travelers were
+curious as to the makers of such colossal trails, but were not tempted
+to gratify this curiosity by invading their lairs.
+
+In all this time, and through all difficulties and dangers, neither
+Grom nor A-ya, nor the unsleeping Loob had lost sight of the object of
+their journey. Every straight and slender sapling and seedling of hard
+grain they tested, but hitherto they had found nothing that came
+within measurable distance of their requirements.
+
+In the customary order of their going, Grom went first, peering ahead,
+ever studying, pondering, observing, with his bow and his club swung
+from his shoulder, his heavy, flint-headed spear always in readiness
+for 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, went
+darting and gliding soundlessly through the undergrowth a few paces to
+the left, guarding against the approach of any attack from the
+jungle-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 on
+their trail.
+
+It chanced that A-ya dropped back some paces further, without saying
+anything to Grom. She had marked a slim shaft of a seedling which
+looked suitable for an arrow; and in case the discovery should prove a
+good one, she wanted the credit of it to herself. She stooped to pull
+the seedling up by the roots, since it seemed too tough to break. It
+was obstinate. In the effort her naked side and shoulder leaned fully
+against the trunk of a small tree of which she had taken no notice. In
+a second it seemed to her as if the tree trunk were made of red-hot
+coals. The stinging fire of it ran like lightning all over her arms
+and body. With a piercing scream she sprang away from the tree, and
+began tearing and beating frantically at her body with both hands. She
+was covered with furious ants--the great, red, stinging ants whose
+venom is like drops of liquid flame.
+
+At the sound of her scream, Grom was back at her side in two leaps,
+his hair and beard bristling stiffly, his eyes blazing with rage. But
+there was no assailant in sight on whom to hurl himself. For a second
+or two he glared about him wildly, with Loob crouched beside him,
+snarling for vengeance. Then, perceiving the woman's plight, he flung
+himself upon her, trying to envelop her in one sweeping embrace that
+should crush all the virulent pests at once. In this he failed
+signally; and in an instant the liquid fire was running over his own
+body. The torture of it, however, was a small thing to him compared
+with the torture of seeing them sting the woman, and feeling himself
+impotent to effect her instant succor. He slapped and beat at her with
+his great hands, while she covered her face with her own hands to
+protect it from disfigurement.
+
+Loob came to help, but Grom, 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. They
+crouched down in it, heads under, for nearly a minute; while Loob,
+spear in hand, stood over them, his wild little eyes scanning the
+water depths in front and the jungle depths behind for the approach of
+any foe.
+
+When they could hold their breath no longer, they stood up. Their red
+assailants were floating off on the current; but the fiery poison
+remained, and they bathed each other's scarlet and scorched shoulders
+assiduously, forgetful for the moment of everything besides. At this
+moment a gigantic water python reared its head from the leafage close
+by, fixed its flat, lidless, glittering eyes upon them, and drew back
+to strike. But in the next second Loob's ready spear was thrust clean
+through its throat, and his yell of warning tore the air. Grom and
+A-ya whipped up onto the bank like a pair of otters: and the python,
+mortally stricken, shot out into the water over their heads, carrying
+Loob's spear with it, gripped tight in the constriction of its throat
+muscles.
+
+As the lashing body struck the surface the water boiled about it,
+suddenly alive with crocodiles. Balked of their human prey, they fell
+upon the python. One of the monsters shot straight up, half-way out of
+the water, with two convulsive coils of the python's tail wrapped
+crushingly about its jaws; but the python, with Loob's spear through
+its throat, could only struggle blindly. A moment more and it was
+bitten in two, and the crocodiles were fighting monstrously among
+themselves for the writhing fragments.
+
+"You got us out of that just in time," said Grom, grinning upon the
+little scout with approval.
+
+A-ya wrung the water out of her heavy hair with both hands, and threw
+the 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 place
+where a belt of woods, perhaps a hundred to two hundred yards in
+depth, ran bordering the river, while behind it a broad stretch of
+grassy plain thrust back the jungle. Along the edge of the plain,
+skirting the belt of woods, the grass was short and the traveling was
+easy; but off to the left the growth was ranker, and interspersed with
+thickets such as Grom always regarded with suspicion. He had learned
+by experience that these dense thickets in the grass-land were a
+favorite lurking-place of the unexpected--and that the unexpected was
+almost always perilous.
+
+Suddenly from the deeper grass a couple of hundred yards or so to the
+left rose heavily the menacing bulk of a red Siva moose bull, and
+stood staring at them with mingled wonder and malevolence in his
+cruelly vindictive eyes. In stature surpassing the biggest rhinoceros
+that Grom had ever seen, he gave the impression of combining the
+terrific power of the rhinoceros with the agile speed and devilish
+cunning of the buffalo. His ponderous head, with its high-arched
+eagle-hooked snout, was armed with two pairs of massive, keen-tipped,
+broad-bladed horns, that seemed to be a deadly-efficient compromise
+between the horns of a buffalo and the palmated antlers of a moose.
+This alarming apparition snorted loudly, and at once from behind him
+lurched to their feet some two score more of his like, and all stood
+with their eyes fixed upon the little group of travelers by the edge
+of the wood.
+
+Grom had heard vague traditions of the implacable ferocity of these
+red monsters, but having before never come across them he answered
+their stare with keen interest. At the same time, edging in closer to
+the wood, he whispered:
+
+"Don't run. But if they come we must go up the first tree. They are
+swift as the wind, these great beasts, and more terrible than the
+saber-tooth."
+
+"Can't go in _these_ trees!" said Loob, whose piercing eyes had
+investigated them minutely at the first glimpse of the monsters in the
+grass.
+
+"Why not?" demanded Grom, his eyes still fixed upon the monsters.
+
+"Oh! The bees! The terrible bees!" whispered A-ya. "Where can we go?"
+
+Grom turned his head and scanned the belt of woodland, his ears now
+suddenly comprehending a deep, humming sound which he had hitherto
+referred solely to the winged foragers in the grass-tops. Scattered at
+intervals from the branches, in the shadowy green gloom, hung a number
+of immense, dark, semi-pear-shaped globes. They looked harmless
+enough, but Grom knew that their inhabitants, the great jungle-bees,
+were more to be dreaded than saber-tooth or crocodile. To disturb, or
+seem to threaten to disturb, one of their nests, meant sure and
+instant doom.
+
+"No, we must trust to our running--and they are very swift," said
+Grom. "But let us go softly now, and perhaps they will not charge upon
+us."
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth when the giant red bull, with a
+grunt of wrath, lurched forward and charged down at them. And
+instantly the whole herd, with their ridiculous little tails stuck up
+stiffly in the air, charged after him. Swift as thought A-ya drew her
+bow. The arrow buried itself deep in the red giant's muzzle. With a
+bawl of fury, he paused, to try and root the burning torment out of
+his nose. The whole herd paused behind him. It was only for a few
+seconds, and then he came on again, blowing blood and foam from his
+nostrils; but they were precious seconds, and the fugitives, running
+lightly, and stooping low for fear of offending the bees, had gained a
+start of a hundred yards or more.
+
+The three were among the swiftest runners of the tribe; but Grom soon
+saw that the utmost they could hope was to maintain their distance.
+And there was the imminent risk that the bees, disturbed by the noise
+of flight and pursuit, might take umbrage. To lessen this frightful
+risk, he swerved out till he was some thirty or forty paces distant
+from the belt of woods. And he noticed, too, that the pursuing herd
+seemed to have no great anxiety to approach the frontiers of the Bee
+People. They were following on a slant that gave the woods a wide
+berth.
+
+About a mile further on the woods came to an end, and Grom, though he
+feared the pace might be beginning to tell on A-ya, and though there
+was no refuge in sight, breathed more freely. He feared the bees more
+than the yellow monsters, because they were something he could not
+fight. The grass-land now ran clear to the river's edge, and gave firm
+footing; and the fugitives raced on, breathing carefully, and trusting
+to come to trees again before they should be spent.
+
+At last a curve of the bank showed them the woods sweeping down again
+to the water, but three or four miles ahead! Grom, looking back over
+his shoulder, realized that their pursuers were now gaining upon them
+appreciably. With an effort he quickened his pace still further. Loob
+responded without difficulty. But A-ya's face showed signs of
+distress, and at this Grom's heart sank. He began to scan the water,
+weighing the chances of the crocodiles. It looked as if they were
+trapped beyond escape.
+
+Perhaps half a mile up the shore a spit of land ran out against the
+current, and behind its shelter an eddy had collected a mass of
+uprooted trees and other flood refuse, all matted with green from the
+growth of wind-borne seeds. It was in reality a great natural raft,
+built by the eddy and anchored behind the little point. For this Grom
+headed with new hope. It might be strong enough--parts of it at
+least--to bear up the three fugitives. But their furious pursuers
+would surely not venture their giant bulks upon it.
+
+Approaching the point he slackened his pace, and steadied A-ya with
+one hand. At the edge of the eddy he stopped, casting an appraising
+eye over the collection of debris, in order to pick out a stable
+retreat and also the most secure path to it. In this pause the
+monsters swept up with a thunder of trampling hooves and windy
+snortings. They had their victims at last where there was no escape.
+
+The raging brutes were not more than a dozen paces behind, when Grom
+led the way out upon the floating mass, picking his steps warily and
+leaping from trunk to trunk. Loob and A-ya followed with like care.
+Certain of the trunks gave and sank beneath their feet, but their feet
+were already away to surer footing. And at the very outermost point of
+that old collection of debris, where the current and the eddy wavered
+for mastery, on a toughly interwoven tangle of uprooted trunks and
+half-dead vines, they found a refuge which did not yield beneath them.
+Here, steadying themselves by upthrust branches, they turned and
+looked back, half apprehensive and half defiant, at their mighty
+pursuers.
+
+"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 in
+his muzzle, the giant bull came plunging on, and half a dozen of his
+closest followers, infected with his madness, came with him. The inner
+edge of the mass gave way at once beneath them--and the bank at this
+point was straight up and down. The monsters floundered in deep water,
+snorting and spluttering, while their fellows on the shore checked
+themselves violently and drew back bawling with bewilderment. As the
+drowning monsters battled to get their front legs up upon the raft,
+the edges gave way continually beneath them, plunging them again and
+again beneath the surface, while A-ya stabbed at them vengefully with
+her spear, and Loob shot arrows into them till Grom stopped him,
+saying that the arrows were too precious to waste. Thereupon Loob
+tripped delicately over the surging trunks and smote at the struggling
+monsters' heads with his light club.
+
+The anchorage of this natural raft having been broken, the weight of
+the monsters striving to gain a foothold upon it soon thrust its firm
+outer portion forth into the grip of the current. In a minute or two
+more this solid portion was torn away from the rest, and went sailing
+off slowly down stream with its living freight. The incoherent remnant
+was left in the eddy, where the snorting monsters struggled and
+threshed about amongst it, now climbing half-way out upon some great
+trunk, which forthwith reared on end and slid them off, now vanishing
+for a moment beneath the beaten stew of leaves and vines.
+
+A couple of the horned giants, being close to the bank, now seemed to
+recover their wits sufficiently to turn and clamber ashore. But the
+others were mad with terror. And in a moment more the fascinated
+watchers on the raft perceived the cause of this madness. All round
+the scene of the turmoil the water seethed with lashing tails and
+snapping jaws; and then one of the monsters, which had struggled out
+into clear water, was dragged down in a boiling vortex of jaws and
+bloody foam. A few moments more and the whole eddy became a bubbling
+hell of slaughter, and great broad washes of crimson streamed out upon
+the current. The monsters, for all their giant strength, and the
+pile-driving blows of their huge hoofs, were as helpless as rabbits
+against their swarming and ravenous assailants; and the battle--which
+indeed was no battle at all--soon was over. The eddy had become but a
+writhing nest of crocodiles.
+
+"It was hardly worth while wasting arrows, you see?" said Grom,
+standing erect on the raft and watching the scene with brooding
+interest.
+
+"Do you suppose those swimming beasts with the great jaws can get at
+us here?" demanded A-ya with a shudder.
+
+"While this thing that carries us holds together, I think we can fight
+them off," replied Grom. And straightway he set himself to examine how
+securely the trees were interknit. The trunks had been piled by flood
+one upon another, and the structure seemed substantial; but to further
+strengthen it he set all to work interweaving the free branches and
+such creepers as the mass contained, with the skill that came of much
+practice in the weaving of tree-top nests.
+
+When all was done that could be done, the voyagers took time to look
+about them. They had by now been swept far out into the river, and the
+shores on either side seemed low and remote. A-ya felt oppressed, the
+face of the waters seeming to her so vast, inscrutable and menacing.
+She stole close up to Grom and edged herself under his massive arm for
+reassurance. The little scout sat like a monkey between two branches,
+and scratched his hairy arms, and, with an expression of pleased
+interest, scanned the water for the approach of new foes. As for Grom,
+he was entranced. This, at last, was what he had really come in search
+of, the stuff for arrows being merely his excuse to himself. This was
+the utterly new experience, the new achievement. He was traveling by
+water, 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 his
+surprise the crocodiles and other formidable water-dwellers, which
+were quite unknown to him, paid them no attention whatever; and he
+concluded that they looked upon the raft as nothing more than a mass
+of floating driftwood containing nothing for them to eat. He could see
+them everywhere about, swimming with brute snouts half above water or
+basking on sandy spits of shore. Then he observed that the current was
+bearing them gradually towards that further shore which he so longed
+to visit, and he thrilled with new anticipation. But when, after
+perhaps an hour, the capricious tide blew them again to mid-stream, a
+new idea took possession of him. He must find some way of influencing
+the direction of their voyage. He could not long relinquish himself to
+the blind whim and chance of the current.
+
+Just as he was beginning to grapple with this problem, A-ya
+anticipated his thought--as he had noticed that she often did. Looking
+up at him through her tossed hair, she enquired where they were
+going.
+
+"I am just trying to think," he answered, "how to make this thing take
+us where we want to go."
+
+"If the water is not too deep, couldn't you push with your long
+spear?" suggested the girl.
+
+Acting at once on the suggestion, Grom leaned over the edge and thrust
+the 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 the
+spear in a wide arc through the water, as if it were a paddle, but
+with the idea merely of testing the resistance of the water. Poor
+substitute as the spear was for a paddle or an oar, his great strength
+made up for its inefficiency, and after a few sweeps he was astonished
+and delighted to notice that the head of the raft had swung away from
+him, 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 the
+other side and repeated the experiment. After several vigorous efforts
+the unwieldy craft yielded. Its head swung straight, and then, very
+gradually, toward the other side. Yes, there was no doubt about it. He
+had found a way of influencing their direction.
+
+"I am going to take you over to the other shore," he announced
+proudly.
+
+And now, laboring in a keen excitement, he set himself to carry out
+his boast. First he so overdid it that he made the raft turn clean
+about and head upstream. He puzzled over this for a time, but at
+length got it once more headed in the direction which he wished it to
+take. Then he found that he could keep it to this direction--more or
+less--by taking a few strokes on one side, then hurriedly crossing to
+take a few strokes on the other. And in this way they began once more
+to approach the other bank. The process, however, was slow; and Grom
+presently concluded that it was wasteful. He hit upon the idea of
+setting A-ya and Loob together to stroking with their spears on one
+side, while he, with his great strength, balanced their effort on the
+other. Whereupon the sluggish craft woke up a little and began to make
+perceptible progress, on a slant across the current toward shore.
+
+"I have found it!" he exclaimed in exultation. "On this thing we can
+travel over the water where we will."
+
+"But not against the current," objected A-ya, whose enthusiasm was a
+little damped by the fact that she did not like the look of that
+further shore.
+
+"That will come in time," declared Grom confidently.
+
+"Here's something coming now," announced Loob, springing to his feet
+and grabbing his bow. At the same moment the flat, villainous head of
+a big crocodile shot up over the edge of the raft, and its owner, with
+enormous jaws half open, started to scramble aboard.
+
+A-ya's bow was bent as swiftly as Loob's, and the two arrows sped
+together, both into the monster's gaping gullet. Amazed at this
+reception it shut its jaws with a loud snap, halted and came on again.
+Then a stab of Grom's great spear caught it full in the eye, and this
+wound struck fear into its dull mind. It rolled back hastily into the
+water and sank, leaving a foamy wake of blood behind it.
+
+By this time they were getting nearer the other shore. But on close
+view, Grom was bound to admit that it was not alluring. It was so low
+as to be all awash, and fringed deep with towering reeds, which were
+traversed by narrow lanes of water. Of dry land there was none to be
+seen.
+
+"Oh, we don't want to go ashore there!" protested A-ya fervently. As
+she spoke a hideous head, with immense, round, bulging eyes and long,
+beak-like mouth arose over the sedge tops on a long, swaying neck and
+stared at them fixedly.
+
+"No, we don't," said Grom, with decision, making haste to swing the
+head of the raft once more out into the channel. They were pursued by
+a dense crowd of mosquitoes, voracious and venomous, which followed
+them to mid-stream and kept tormenting them till an up-river gust blew
+them off.
+
+Grom made up his mind that the exploration of that unknown shore could
+wait a more convenient season. He was now deeply absorbed in the
+complex problem of directing and managing his raft. As he pulled his
+spear through the water, and noted the additional effect of its flat
+head, the conception came to him of something that would get a more
+propulsive grip upon the water than was possible to a round pole.
+Furthermore, he was quick to realize that the immense, shapeless mass
+of debris on which they were traveling might be replaced by something
+light and manageable which he would make by lashing some trimmed
+trunks together with lengths of bamboo to give additional buoyancy. As
+he brooded this in silence, with that deep, inward look in his eyes
+which always kept A-ya from breaking in upon his vision, he came to
+the 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 new
+structure might very well be pushed along, in shallow water, with a
+pole. Having thought this out, he drew a deep breath, looked up, and
+met A-ya's eyes with a smile. His eager desire now was to get back
+home and put his new scheme into execution.
+
+"Where are we going now?" asked A-ya.
+
+Grom looked about him wildly--at the sky, at the far-off hills on
+their right, at the course of the stream, which had changed within the
+past few miles. His sense of direction was unerring.
+
+"This river," he answered, "flows towards the rising sun, and must
+empty into the bitter waters not more than a day or a half day from
+the Caves. We are going home. We will come again to look for arrows in
+a new raft which I will make."
+
+As he spoke, Loob's spear darted down beside the raft, and came up
+with a big, silvery fish writhing upon it. He broke its neck with a
+blow 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 Grom, "that may very well
+be. Our journey will be safe and easy, and the good fire we will have
+always 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 hand
+that they looked at it askance, distrustful of the unsought-for
+largess. For a week or more their hunting-grounds had been swarming
+with game, in amazing and daily increasing numbers, till there was
+little more of chance or of excitement in the hunt than in plucking a
+ripe mango from its branch. It was game of the choicest kinds,
+too--deer of many varieties, and antelope, and the little wild horse
+whose flesh they accounted such a delicacy. They slew, and slew, and
+their cooking-fires were busy night and day, and the flesh they could
+not devour was dried in the sun in long strips or smoked in the reek
+of green-wood fires. They feasted greedily, but there was something
+sinister in the whole matter, something ominous; and they would stop
+at times to wonder anxiously what stroke of fate could be hanging over
+the Caves.
+
+During the past day or two, moreover, there had been a disquieting
+influx of those great and fierce beasts which the Cave Men were by no
+means anxious to hunt. The giant white and the woolly rhinoceros had
+arrived by the score in the dense thickets of the steaming savannah
+which unrolled its green-and-yellow breadths along the southward base
+of the downs. These half-blind brutes appeared to be waging a dreadful
+and doubtful war with the red herds of those monstrous, cone-horned
+survivals from an earlier age, the Arsinotheria, who had ruled the
+reeking savannah for countless cycles. The roar and trampling of the
+struggle came up from time to time to the dwellers in the Caves, when
+the hot breeze came up from the southward.
+
+What concerned the Cave Folk far more than any near-sighted and
+blundering rhinoceros, however malignant, was the sudden arrival of
+the great red bears, the black lions, the grinning and implacable
+saber-tooth tigers, and giant black-gray wolves which hunted in small,
+handy packs of six or seven in number. All these, the dread foes of
+Man for as long as tradition could remember, had been mercifully few
+and scattered. Now, in a night, they had become as common as conies;
+and not a child could be allowed to play beyond shelter of the
+cave-mouth fires, not a woman durst venture to the spring without a
+brightly blazing fire-brand in her hand. Yet--and this seemed to the
+Tribe the most portentous sign of all--these blood-thirsty beasts
+appeared to have lost much of their ancient hostility to Man. They
+were all well fed, of course, their accustomed prey being now so
+abundant that they had little more to do than put forth an armed paw
+and seize it. But they all seemed uneasy and half-cowed, as if weighed
+down by a menace which they did not know how to face. When a man
+confronted 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 Grom, his right hand and his counselor, stood
+upon the bare green ridge above the Cave-mouth, and stared down
+anxiously upon the sun-drenched plain. Of old it had taken keen eyes
+to discern the varied life which populated its bamboo-thickets and
+cane-choked marshes. Now it was as thronged as the home pastures of a
+cattle-farm. Here and there a battle raged between such small-brained
+brutes as the white rhinoceros and the cone-horned monster; but for
+the most part there was an apprehensive sort of truce, the different
+kinds of beasts keeping as far as possible to themselves.
+
+Further out in the plain pastured a herd of gigantic creatures such as
+neither Bawr nor Grom had ever seen before. A pair of rhinoceros
+looked like pygmies beside them. They were both tall and massive, of a
+dark mud-color, with colossal heads, no necks whatever, huge ears that
+flapped like wings, immensely long, up-curving tusks of gleaming
+yellow--mighty enough to carry a bison cradled in their curve--and it
+seemed to the astonished watchers on the ridge that from the snout of
+each monster grew a great snake, which reared itself into the air, and
+waved terribly, and pulled down the tops of trees for the monster's
+food.
+
+It was the Cave Man's first view of the Mammoth--which had not yet
+developed the shaggy coat it was later to grow on the cold sub-Artic
+plains.
+
+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 a
+hand. They are very many, and very terrible. Do you think it is they
+who are driving all these other beasts upon us to overwhelm us?"
+
+Grom thought long before replying.
+
+"No," said he, "they are not flesh-eaters. See! They do not heed the
+other beasts. They eat trees. And they, too, seem restless. I think
+they are themselves driven. But what dreadful beings must be they who
+can drive them!"
+
+"If they are driven over us," muttered Bawr, "they will grind us and
+our fires into the dust."
+
+"It must be men," mused Grom aloud, "men far mightier than ourselves
+and so countless that the hordes of the Tree Men would seem a handful
+in comparison. Only men, or gods, and in swarms like locusts, could so
+drive all these mighty beasts before them as a child drives rabbits."
+
+"Before they come," said Bawr, dropping his great craggy chin upon his
+breast, "the People of the Caves will be trodden out. Whither can we
+escape from such foes? We will build great fires before the caves, and
+we will go down fighting, as befits men."
+
+He lifted his maned and massive head, and shook his great spear
+defiantly at the unknown doom that was coming up from the south. But
+Grom's eyes were sunken deep under his brows in brooding thought.
+
+"There is one way, perhaps," he said at length. "We have learned to
+journey on the water. We must build us rafts, many rafts, to carry all
+the tribe. And when we can no longer hold our fires and our caves we
+will push out upon the water, and perhaps make our way to that blue
+shore 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 Grom. "But many of us will
+escape, to keep the tribe-fires burning, if the gods be kind upon that
+day and bind down the winds till we get over. If we stay here we shall
+all die."
+
+"It is well," grunted Bawr, turning to hurry down the steep. "We will
+build 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, lashing
+them with ropes of vine and cords of hide, and laboriously lopping
+some of the more obstructive branches by the combined use of fire and
+split stones. The women, and the lame slave Ook-ootsk--with the old
+men, who, though their hearts were still high, were too frail of their
+hands for such a heavy task as raft-building--remained before the
+Caves under the command of A-ya, Grom's mate. They had enough to do in
+feeding the chain of fires, keeping the children out of danger, and
+fighting back with spear and arrow the ever-encroaching mob of
+wild-eyed beasts. The beasts feared the fires, and feared the human
+beings who leaped and screamed and smote from among the fires. But
+still more they seemed to fear some unknown thing behind them. For a
+time, however, the crackling flames and the biting shafts proved a
+sufficient barrier, and the motley but terrifying invaders went
+sheering off irresolutely to westward over the downs.
+
+Down by the edge of the tide the raft-builders worked under Grom's
+guidance. The broad water--some four or five miles across--was the
+tidal estuary of a great river which flowed out of the north-west. Its
+brimming current bore down from the interior jungles the trunks of
+many uprooted trees, which the tides of the estuary hurled back and
+strewed along the beach. The raft-builders, therefore, had plenty of
+material to work with. And the fear that lay chill upon their hearts
+urged them to a diligence that was far from their habit.
+
+It was rather like working in a nightmare. From time to time would
+come a rush, a stampede, of deer or tapirs, along the strip of beach
+between the water and the cliff. The toiling men would draw aside till
+the rabble went by, then fall to work again.
+
+Once, however, it was a herd of wild cattle, snorting, and tossing
+their wide, keen-pointed horns; and their trampling onrush filled the
+whole space so that the men had to plunge out into deep water to
+escape. Several, afraid of the big-mouthed, flesh-eating fish which
+infested the estuary at high tide, stayed too close in shore, and paid
+for 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. By
+sunrise Bawr and Grom estimated that there were rafts enough to carry
+the whole tribe, provided the present calm held on. They decided,
+however, to construct several more, in case some should prove less
+buoyant 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 caught
+upon a rock and twitched from off her loins as she ran, came fleeing
+down the hill-path, her hair afloat upon the fresh morning air.
+Straggling far behind her came a crowd of children, and old women
+carrying 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 there
+was 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 Grom. "A-ya must have sent them, because the time
+has come. Let us wait for the young girl, who seems to bring a
+message."
+
+Breathless, and clutching at her bosom with one hand, the girl fell at
+Bawr's feet.
+
+"A-ya says, 'Come quick!'" she gasped. "They are too many. They run
+over the fires and trample us."
+
+Grom 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 look
+to the rafts."
+
+Taking a half-score of the strongest warriors with him, Grom raced up
+the 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 down
+with ropes of vine to follow the last ebb, and guided carefully back
+on the returning flood. But most of them were lying where they had
+been built, or left by the preceding tide, along high-water mark, as
+hopelessly stranded, for the next two hours, as a birch log after a
+freshet. As the old women with children arrived, Bawr rushed them down
+the wet beach to the rafts which were afloat, appointing to each
+clumsy raft four men, with long, rough flattened poles, to manage it.
+For the moment, all these men had to do was hold their charges in
+place that they might not be swept away by the incoming tide.
+
+When Grom and his eager handful, passing a stream of trembling
+fugitives on the way, reached the level ground before the Caves, the
+sight that greeted them was tremendous and appalling. It looked as if
+some great country to the southward had gathered together all its
+beasts and then vomited them forth in one vast torrent, confused and
+irresistible, to the north. It was a wholesale migration, on such a
+scale as the modern world has never even dreamed of, but suggested in
+a feeble way by the torrential drift of the bison across the North
+American plains half a century ago, or the sudden, inexplicable
+marches of the lemming myriads out of the Scandinavian barrens that
+give them birth.
+
+The shrill cries of the women, fighting like she-wolves in defense of
+the children and the home-caves, the hoarse shouts of the old men,
+weak but indomitable, were mingled with an indescribable medley of
+noises--gruntings, bellowings, howlings, roarings, bleatings and
+brayings--from the dreadful mob of beasts which besieged the open
+space behind the fires. Some of the beasts were maddened with their
+terror, some were in a fighting rage, some only wanted to escape the
+throng behind them. But all seemed bent upon passing the fires and
+getting into the Caves, as if they thought there to find refuge from
+the unknown fear.
+
+At the extreme right of the line the two farthest fires were already
+overwhelmed, trodden out by frantic hooves, and three or four old
+men, with a couple of desperate young women, behind a barrier of
+slain elk and stags were fighting like furies to hold back the
+victorious onrush. Two of the old men were down, trodden out between
+the fires by blind hooves, and a third, jammed limply against the
+rocky wall beside the furthest cave, was being worried by a
+bear--hideously but aimlessly, as if the great beast hardly heeded
+what it was doing. There was something peculiarly terrifying in the
+animal's preoccupation.
+
+At the center of the line, immediately before the main Cave-mouth--whose
+yawning entrance seemed to be the objective of the swarming
+beasts--A-ya was heading the battle, with the lame slave, Ook-ootsk,
+crouched fighting at her side like a colossal frog gone mad. Here the
+fires were almost extinguished--but the line of slain beasts formed a
+tolerable barricade, upon the top of which the women leapt, stabbing
+with their spears and screeching shrill taunts, while the old men
+leaned upon the gory pile to save their strength with frugal
+precision. Here and there among the carcases was the body of a woman or
+an old man, impaled on the horn of a bull or ripped open by the
+rending antler of an elk. As Grom and his men came shouting across the
+level a huge woolly rhinoceros plunged over the barrier, his bloody
+horn ploughing the carcases, trod down a couple of the defenders without
+appearing to see them, dashed through the nearest fire, and charged
+blindly into the Cave-mouth with his matted coat all ablaze. The
+children and old women who had not already fled down to the beach
+shrieked in horror. The frantic monster heeded them not at all, but went
+thundering on into the bowels of the cavern.
+
+"Go back, all you women!" yelled Grom above the tumult, as he and his
+men 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 back
+and pouncing upon their own little ones--all but A-ya, who remained
+doggedly at Grom's side.
+
+"Go," ordered Grom fiercely. "The children need you. Get them all
+down."
+
+Sullenly the woman obeyed, seeing he was right, but still lusting for
+the fight, though her wearied arm could now do little more than lift
+the spear.
+
+Under the shock of these fresh fighters, with lionlike heads,
+masterful eyes, and smashing, irresistible weapons, the front ranks of
+the animals recoiled, trampling those behind them; and for a few
+minutes the pressure was relieved. Grom turned to the old men.
+
+"You go now," he ordered.
+
+But they refused.
+
+"We stay here," cried one, breathless, but with fire in his ancient
+eyes. "None too much room on the rafts." And they fell again grimly to
+the fight.
+
+Grom laughed proudly. With such mettle even in withered veins, the
+Tribe, he thought, was destined to great things. He turned to the lame
+slave, 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 sun
+and the high spaces of air.
+
+Before Grom could answer, from below the southward edge of the plateau
+there came a mad, high trumpeting, so loud that every other voice in
+that pandemonium was silenced by it. At that dread sound the rabble of
+beasts surged forward again upon the barrier, upon the clubs and
+spears of the defenders. Up over the brow of the slope came a forest
+of waving trunks, and tossing tusks, and ponderous black foreheads.
+
+"The Two-Tails are upon us!" cried Grom, in a voice of awe. And his
+followers gasped, as the colossal shapes shouldered up into full
+view.
+
+Grom looked behind him, and saw the last of the women and children,
+shepherded vehemently by A-ya with the butt of her spear, vanishing
+down the steep toward the beach.
+
+"It is time for us to go too," shouted Grom, clutching the lame slave
+by 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 his
+great spear into the heart of a bull which came over the barrier at
+that instant. Grom 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 the
+Tribe.
+
+The beasts came over the barrier and the fires like a yelling flood.
+But now, finding all opposition so suddenly withdrawn, the flood
+divided upon the massive, thrusting figure of Ook-ootsk as upon a
+black rock in mid-stream. It united again behind him, surging
+pell-mell for the Cave-mouths, where in the crush the weaker and
+lighter 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. Grom,
+having seen the last of his warriors pass down the beach paths, turned
+for one more glimpse of the monstrous and incredible scene. He had a
+swift vision of the squatting form of Ook-ootsk thrusting upward with
+reddened spear at the breast of a black monster which hung over him
+like a mountain. Then the mountain rolled forward upon him, blotting
+him out, and Grom 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 of
+existence by the rush of maddened bison along the beach, and the
+keenings of their relatives rose above the shouts and cries of
+embarkation. Fully half the rafts were afloat, with their loads, by
+now, and men grunted heavily in the effort to pry the others free,
+while women and children crowded into the water around them, waiting
+to struggle aboard as soon as the men would let them.
+
+As Grom 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 aside
+from the caves. Some, being sure-footed, like the lions and bears,
+made their way with care down the paths. Others, pushed over and
+struggling frantically, came rolling downward, bouncing from rock and
+ledge, and landing on the beach a mass of broken bones. Then behind
+them, along the brink, black and gigantic against the blue sky-line,
+appeared a group of the Mammoths. They waved their long trunks, and
+trumpeted piercingly, but hesitated to try the descent.
+
+"Hurry! hurry!" thundered Bawr, straining at the stranded timbers till
+the great veins stood out on neck and forehead as if they would
+burst.
+
+Under the added efforts of Grom and his band the last of the rafts
+floated. The children were thrown aboard, the women clambered after
+them, and the men, wading and guiding, lest the rafts should ground
+again, began to follow cautiously.
+
+At this moment, along the beach came a new rush of animals--chiefly
+buffalo, headed by three huge white rhinoceros. These all seemed quite
+blind with panic. They dashed on straight ahead, paying no heed
+whatever either to the people on the rafts or to the other beasts
+coming down the steep. On their heels thundered a second herd of
+Mammoths, their trunks held high in the air, the red caverns of their
+mouths wide open.
+
+As these colossal, rolling bulks came abreast of the rafts, a child
+shrieked at the terrifying sight. The leader of the herd turned his
+malignant little eye upon the rafts, seeming to perceive them for the
+first time. Without pausing in his huge stride he reached down his
+trunk, whipped it about the waist of Bawr, and swung him aloft,
+crushing in his ribs with the terrific pressure, and carried him along
+high in the air above the trumpeting ranks.
+
+A howl of rage went up from the rafts; and A-ya, whose bow was quick
+as thought, let fly an arrow before Grom could stay her hand. The
+shaft struck deep in the monster's trunk. Dashing down its lifeless
+victim among the feet of the herd, the monster tried to turn back to
+take vengeance for the strange wound. But unable to stem the avalanche
+behind, it was borne up the beach, screaming with rage.
+
+Grom, who was now sole chief and master of the tribe, signed every
+raft to push out into deep water, beyond reach of further attack. With
+all responsibility now upon his shoulders, he had little time to
+grieve for the death of Bawr, who, after all, had died greatly, as a
+Chief should. The rafts were now traveling inland at a fair rate, on
+the last half-hour of the flood; and, as the estuary narrowed rapidly
+above their starting-place, he hoped to be able, during the slack of
+tide, to work the clumsy rafts well over towards the northern shore
+before getting caught in the full strength of the ebb. As he studied
+out this problem, and urged the warriors to their utmost effort on the
+heavy and awkward pole-paddles, he kept puzzling all the time over the
+great mystery. What was it that swept even the mighty mammoths before
+its face? How should he name the Fear?
+
+Then all at once, when the rafts were about three or four hundred
+yards 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 along
+the beach from which the rafts had just escaped, in countless
+ravening, snapping swarms, poured hyenas by the myriad--huge hyenas,
+bigger than the mightiest timber wolves, their deep-jowled heads
+carried close to the ground. It was clear in a moment that they were
+mad with hunger, driven by nothing but their own raging appetites.
+They fled from nothing, but some of them stopped, in struggling
+masses, to devour the bodies of the beasts which they found slain,
+while the rest poured on insatiably, to pull down by sheer weight of
+numbers and the might of their bone-crushing jaws the mightiest of the
+monsters 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 amuck
+through the mass, stamping them out by the hundred. But this made no
+impression at all, either upon their numbers or the rage of their
+hunger, and in a few minutes the colossus, its feet half eaten off,
+would come crashing down, to be swarmed over and disappear like a fat
+grub in an ant-heap. Here and there, too, a mammoth, more sagacious
+than its fellows, would wade out belly deep into the water--upon
+finding its escape cut off--and stand there plucking its foes one by
+one from the shore to trample them under its feet, screaming shrill
+triumph.
+
+Grom turned with a deep breath from the unspeakable spectacle, looked
+across to the green line of the opposite shore, and thanked his
+unknown gods that it was so far off. With that great river rolling its
+flood between, he thought the Tribe might rest secure from these
+fiends and once more build up its fortunes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE LAKE OF LONG SLEEP
+
+
+Driven from their home beside the Bitter Water by the great
+migration of the beasts, the Tribe of the Cave Folk, diminished in
+numbers and stricken in spirit, had escaped on rafts across the
+broad river-estuary which washed the northern border of their
+domain. There they had found a breathing-space, but it had proved a
+perilous one. The whole region north of the estuary was little
+better than a steaming swamp, infested with poisonous snakes and
+insects, and with strange monsters, survivals from a still earlier
+age, whose ferocity drove the Cave Folk back to their ancestral life
+in the tree-tops. Under these conditions it was all but impossible
+to keep alight the sacred fires--as precious to the tribe as life
+itself--which they had brought with them in their flight upon the
+rafts. And Grom, the Chief, saw his harassed people in danger of
+sinking back into the degradation from which his discovery and
+conquest of fire had so wonderfully uplifted them.
+
+From the top of a solitary jobo tree, which towered above the rank
+surrounding jungle, Grom could make out what looked like a low bank of
+purple cloud along the western and north-western horizon. As it was
+always there, whenever he climbed to look at it, he concluded that it
+was not a cloud-bank, but a line of hills. Where there were hills
+there might be caves. In any case, the People must have some better
+place to inhabit than this region of swamps and monsters. The way to
+that blue line of promise lay across what would surely be the path of
+the migrating beasts, if they should take it into their heads to swim
+across the river. The possibility was one from which even his resolute
+spirit shrank. But he felt that he must face any risk in the hope of
+winning his way to those cloudy hills. Within an hour of his reaching
+this decision the Tribe of the Cave Folk was once more on the march.
+
+The first few days of the march were like a nightmare. Grom led the
+way along the shore of the river, both because that seemed the
+shortest way to the hills, and because, in case of emergency, the open
+water afforded a door of escape by raft. Had it been possible to make
+the journey by raft matters would have been simplified; but Grom had
+already proved by experience that his heavy unwieldy rafts could not
+be forced upwards against the mighty current of the river. At the last
+point to which the flood-tides would carry them the rafts had been
+abandoned--herded together into a quiet cove, and lashed to the shore
+by twisted vine-ropes against some possible future need.
+
+At the head of the dismal march went Grom, with his mate A-ya, and her
+two children, and the hairy little scout Loob, whose feet were as
+quick as his eyes and ears and nostrils, and whose sinews were as
+untiring as those of the gray wolf. Immediately behind these came the
+main body of the warriors, on a wide line so as to guard against
+surprise on the flank. Then followed the women and children, bunched
+as closely as possible behind the center of the line; and a knot of
+picked warriors, under young Mo, the brother of A-ya, guarded the
+rear. There were no old men and women, all these having gone down in
+the last great battle at the Caves, selling their lives as dearly as
+possible to cover the retreat. Such of the young women as had no small
+children to carry bore the heavy burdens of the fire-baskets, or
+bundles of smoke-dried meat, leaving the warriors free to use their
+bows 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, but
+the progress was slow and laborious. At ground-level the swarms of
+stinging insects were always with them, till Grom invented the use of
+smudges. When every alternate member of the tribe carried a torch of
+dry grass and half-green bark, the march was enveloped in a cloud of
+acrid smoke, which the insects found more or less disconcerting.
+
+Of the grave perils of this weary march to the hills a single instance
+may suffice. The nights, as a rule, were passed by the whole tribe in
+the tree-tops, both for the greater security, and because there was
+seldom enough dry ground to sleep upon. But one evening, toward
+sunset, 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. The
+trees which dotted it were smooth, straight, towering shafts with wide
+fans of foliage at their far-off tops. And the ground between these
+clean, symmetrical trunks was unencumbered, being clothed only with a
+rich, soft, spicy-scented herbage, akin to the thymes and mints. Such
+an opportunity for rest and refreshment was not to be let slip, and
+Grom ordered an immediate halt.
+
+A fat, pig-like water beast, of the nature of the dugong, had been
+speared that day in a bayou beside the line of march, and with great
+contentment the tribe settled themselves down to such a comfortable
+feasting as they had not known for many days. While the fat dugong was
+being hacked to pieces and divided under the astute direction of A-ya,
+Grom made haste to establish the camp-fires in a chain completely
+encircling the encampment, as a protection against night-prowlers from
+the surrounding jungle. As darkness fell the flames lit up the soaring
+trunks, but the roof of the over-arching foliage was so high that the
+smoky illumination was lost in it.
+
+While the rest of the tribe gave itself up to the feasting, Grom and
+Loob, and half a dozen of the other warriors, kept vigilant watch
+whilst they ate, distrusting the black depths of jungle and the deep,
+reed-fringed pools beyond the circle of light. Suddenly, all along one
+side of the island there arose a sound of heavy splashing, and out of
+the darkness came a row of small, malignant eyes, all fixed upon the
+feasters. Then into the circle of light swam the masks of giant
+alligators and strange, tusked caymans. Quite unawed by the fires they
+came ashore with a clumsy rush, open-mouthed.
+
+While the clamoring women snatched the children away to the other side
+of the encampment, Grom and the other warriors hurled themselves upon
+the hideous invaders as they came waddling with amazing nimbleness in
+between the fires. But these were no assailants to be met with bow and
+spear. At Grom's sharp orders each warrior snatched a blazing brand
+from the fire, and drove it into the gaping throat of his nearest
+assailant. In their stupid ferocity the monsters invariably bit upon
+the brand before they realized its nature. Then, bellowing with pain,
+they wheeled about and scrambled back toward the water, lashing out
+with their gigantic tails, so that three of the warriors were knocked
+over and half a dozen of the fires were scattered.
+
+The feasters had hardly more than settled down after this startling
+visitation, when from the darkness inland came a hoarse, hooting cry,
+followed by a succession of crashing thuds, as if a pair of mammoths
+were playing leap-frog in the jungle. All the men sprang again to
+their weapons, and stood waiting, in a sudden hush, straining their
+eyes into the perilous dark. Some of the women herded the children
+into the very center of the island, while others fed the fires with
+feverish haste. The hooting call, and the heavy, leaping thuds, came
+nearer and nearer at a terrifying speed; and suddenly, amid the
+far-off, vaguely-lighted tangle of the tree-trunks appeared a giant
+form, seven or eight times the height of Grom himself. Leaping upon
+its mighty hind-legs, and holding its mailed fore-paws before its
+chest, it came bounding like a colossal kangaroo through the jungle,
+smashing down the branches and smaller trees as it came, and balancing
+itself at each spring with its massive, reptilian tail. Its vast head,
+something like a cross between that of a monstrous horse and that of
+an alligator, was upborne upon a long, snaky neck, and its eyes, huge
+and round and lidless, were like two discs of shining and enamelled
+metal 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,
+Grom yelled an order and a swarm of arrows darted from the bows to
+meet it. But they fell futile from its armored hide, which gleamed
+like dull bronze in the fire-light. Grom shouted again, and this time
+the warriors hurled their spears--and they, too, fell harmless from
+the monster's armor. Its next crashing bound brought the monster to
+the edge of the encampment, where one of its ponderous feet
+obliterated a fire. With a lightning swoop of its gigantic head it
+seized the nearest warrior in its jaws and swung him, screaming, high
+into the air, as a heron might snatch up a sprawling frog. At the same
+instant A-ya, who was the one unerring archer in the tribe, let fly an
+arrow which pierced full half its length into the center of one of
+those horrifying enamelled eyes; while Grom, who alone, of all the
+warriors, had not recoiled in terror, succeeded in driving a spear
+deep into the unarmored inner side of the monster's thigh. But both
+these wounds, dreadful though they were, failed to make the colossus
+drop its prey. With mighty, braying noises through its nostrils it
+brushed the spear shaft from its hold like a straw, flopped about, and
+with the arrow still sticking in its eye, went leaping off again into
+the darkness to devour its victim.
+
+For several hours, with the fires trebled in number and stirred to
+fiercer heat, the tribe waited for the monster to return and claim
+another victim. But it did not return. At length Grom concluded that
+his spear-head in its groin and A-ya's arrow in its eye had given it
+something else to think of. Once more he set the guards, and gradually
+the tribe, inured to horrors, settled itself down to sleep. It slept
+out the rest of the night without disturbance--but the following
+night, and the next two nights thereafter, were spent in the
+tree-tops. Then, on the fourth day, the harassed travelers emerged
+from 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 would
+have it, the worn travelers found themselves once more in the line of
+the hordes of migrating beasts.
+
+Grom's heart sank. To reach the refuge of the hills across the march
+of those maddened hordes was obviously impossible. Were his people to
+be forced back into the swamp, to resume the cramped and ape-like life
+among the branches? Having ordered the building of a half-circle of
+fire around a spur of the jungle, he climbed a tree to reconnoiter.
+
+The river ran but a mile or two distant upon his left. Immediately
+before him the fleeing beasts were not numerous, consisting merely of
+small herds and terrified stragglers. Further out, however, toward the
+hills, the plain was blackened by the fugitives, who were thrust on by
+the myriads swimming the river behind them. Assuredly, it was not to
+be thought of that he should attempt to lead his people across the
+path of that desperate flight. But a point that Grom noted with relief
+was that only certain kinds of beasts had ventured the crossing of the
+river. He saw no bears, lions or saber-tooths among those streaming
+hordes. He saw deer of every kind--good swimmers all of them--with
+immense, rolling herds of buffalo and aurochs, and scattered companies
+of the terrible siva moose, and some bands of the giant elk, their
+antlers topping the mimosa thickets. Here and there, lumbering along
+sullenly as if reluctant to retreat before any peril, journeyed a huge
+rhinoceros, stopping from time to time for a few hurried mouthfuls of
+the rich plains grass. But as yet there was not a mammoth in
+sight--whereat Grom wondered, as he thought they would have been among
+the first to dare the crossing of the river. Had they kept on up the
+other shore, hesitating to trust their colossal bulks to the current,
+or had they turned at bay, at last, in uncontrollable indignation, and
+gone down before the countless hordes of their ignoble assailants?
+
+The absence of the mammoths, which he dreaded more than all the other
+beasts because of the fierce intelligence that gleamed in their eyes,
+decided Grom. He would lead his people along to the right, skirting
+the swamp and marching parallel to the flight of the beasts,
+calculating thus to have the jungle always for a refuge, though not
+for a dwelling, until they should come to a region of hills and caves
+too difficult for the migrating beasts to traverse.
+
+For several days this plan answered to a marvel. The fugitives nearest
+to the swamp-edge were mostly deer of various species, which swerved
+away nervously from the line of march, but at the same time afforded
+such good hunting that the travelers revelled in abundance and rapidly
+recovered their spirits. Once, when a great wave of maddened buffalo
+surged over upon them, the whole tribe fled back into the jungle,
+clambering into the trees, and stabbing down, with angry shouts, at
+the nearest of their assailants. But the assault was a blind one. The
+buffalo, a black mass that seemed to foam with tossing horns and
+rolling eyes, soon passed on to their unknown destination. And the
+tribe, dropping down from the branches, quite cheerfully resumed its
+march.
+
+On the fifth day of the march they saw the jungle on their right come
+to an end. It was succeeded by a vast expanse of shallow mere dotted
+with half-drowned, rushy islets, and swarming with crocodiles. After
+some hesitation, Grom decided to go on, though he was uneasy about
+forsaking the refuge of the trees. Some leagues ahead, however, and a
+little toward the left, he could see a low, thick-wooded hill, which
+he thought might serve the tribe for a shelter. With many misgivings,
+he led the way directly towards it, swerving out across the path of a
+vast but straggling horde of sambur deer which seemed almost
+exhausted.
+
+To Grom's surprise these stately and beautiful animals showed neither
+hostility nor fear toward human beings. According to all his previous
+experience, the attitude of every beast toward man was one of fear or
+fierce hate. These sambur, on the contrary, seemed rather to welcome
+the companionship of the tribe, as if looking to it for some
+protection against the strange pursuing peril. His sleepless sagacity
+perceiving the value of this great escort as a buffer against the
+contact of less kindly hordes, Grom gave strict orders that none of
+these beasts should be molested. And the Cave Folk, not without
+apprehension, found themselves traveling in the vanguard of an army of
+tall, high-antlered beasts which stared at them with mild eyes of
+inquiry and appeal.
+
+Marching at their best speed, the Tribe kept easily in the van of the
+distressed sambur, and more than once in the next few hours, Grom had
+reason to congratulate himself upon his venture into this strange
+fellowship. First, for instance, he saw a herd of black buffalo
+overtake the sambur host and dash heavily into its rear ranks. The
+frightened sambur closed up, instead of scattering, and the impetus of
+the buffalo presently spent itself upon the unresisting mass. They
+edged their way through to the left leaving swathes of gored and
+trodden sambur in their wake, and went thundering off on another line
+of retreat, caroming into a herd of aurochs, which fought them off and
+punished them murderously. It was obvious to Grom, as he studied the
+dust-clouds of this last encounter, that the buffalo herd, here in the
+open, would have rolled over the tribe irresistibly, and trampled it
+flat.
+
+Journeying thus at top speed toward that hill of promise before them,
+the travelers came at length to a wide space of absolutely level
+ground which presented a most curious appearance. It was as level as a
+windless lake, and almost without vegetation. The naked surface was of
+a sort of indeterminate dust-color, but dotted here and there with
+tiny patches of vegetation so stunted that it was little more than
+moss. Grom, with his inquiring mind, would have liked to stop to
+investigate this curious surface, unlike anything he had ever seen
+before. But the hordes of the sambur were behind, pressing the tribe
+onwards, and straight ahead was the wooded hill, dense with foliage,
+luring with its promise of safe and convenient shelter. He led the
+way, therefore, without hesitation, out across the baked and barren
+waste, sniffing curiously, as he went, at a strange smell, pungent but
+not unpleasant, which steamed up from the dry, hot surface all about
+him.
+
+The first peculiarity that he noticed was a remarkable springiness in
+the surface upon which he trod. Then he was struck by the fact that
+the dust-brown surface was seamed and criss-crossed in many places by
+small cracks--like those in sun-scorched mud, except that the cracks
+were almost black in color. These things caused him no misgivings. But
+presently, to his consternation, he detected a slight but amazing
+undulation, an immensely long, immensely slow wave rolling across the
+dry surface before him. He could hardly believe his eyes--for
+assuredly nothing could look more like good solid land than that
+stretch 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 kind
+of horror.
+
+Before he could reply, cries and shouts arose among the tribe behind
+him, and they all rushed forward, almost sweeping Grom and A-ya from
+their 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 front
+ranks were being engulfed with frantic snortings and awful groans,
+in what looked like a dense, blackish, glistening ooze. The ranks
+behind were being forced forward to this awful doom, in spite of
+their panic-stricken struggles to hold back; and it was the
+pressure of this battling mass that was creating the horrible,
+bulging undulation on the plain.
+
+Grom's quick intelligence took in the situation on the instant.
+The naked brown surface beneath the feet of the tribe was nothing
+more 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 wide
+eyes of terror, was already dragging fiercely at his elbow. But to
+turn back was utterly impossible. That way lay the long strip of
+engulfing pitch, swallowing up insatiably the ranks of the groaning
+and kicking sambur. There was but one possible way of escape left
+open, and that was straight ahead.
+
+But would the crust continue to uphold them? Already, under the weight
+of the whole tribe pressing together, it was beginning to sag
+hideously. With furious words and blows he tried to make the tribe
+scatter to right and left, so as to spread the pressure as widely as
+possible. Perceiving his purpose, A-ya and Loob, and several of the
+leading warriors, seconded his efforts with frantic vehemence; till in
+a few minutes the whole tribe, amazed and quaking with awe, was
+extended like a fan over a front of three or four hundred yards.
+Seeing that the perilous sagging of the crust was at once relieved,
+Grom then ordered the tribe to advance cautiously, keeping the same
+wide-open formation, while he himself brought up the rear.
+
+But in a few minutes every one, from Grom downwards, came to a halt
+irresistibly, in order to watch the monstrous drama unfolding behind
+them.
+
+For nearly half a mile to either side of their immediate rear, between
+the still unbroken surface of the dust-brown expanse and the edge of
+the trampled grassy plain, stretched a sort of canal, perhaps ten
+paces wide, of brown-black, glistening pitch, beaten up with thrashing
+antlers, and tossing heads that whistled despairingly through wide
+nostrils, and heaving, agonizing bulks that went down slowly to their
+doom. After several ranks of the herd had been engulfed those next
+behind turned about in terror and fought madly to force their way back
+from the fatal brink. But the inexorable masses behind them rolled
+them on backwards, and slowly they too were thrust down into the
+pitch, till the canal was filled to the brink, and writhed horribly
+along its whole length. By this time, however, the alarm had spread
+through the rest of the sambur ranks. By a desperate effort they got
+themselves turned, and went surging off to the left in a direction
+parallel to the edge of the plain of death.
+
+Thrilled with the wonder and the horror of it, Grom drew a deep breath
+and relaxed the tension of his watching. He was just about to turn and
+order the tribe forward again, when he was arrested by the sight of a
+vast cloud of dust rolling up swiftly upon the left flank of the
+retreating sambur.
+
+A confused cry of alarm went up from the watching tribe, as they saw a
+forest of waving trunks appear in the front of the dust-cloud. A
+second or two more and a long array of mammoths emerged along the path
+of the cloud. Among the mammoths, here and there, raced a black or a
+white rhinoceros, or a towering, spotted giraffe. Behind this front
+rank, vague and portentous through the veiling cloud, came further
+colossal hordes, filling the distance as far as eye could see.
+
+This advance looked as if nothing on earth, not even the lake of
+pitch, could ever stop it, and certain of the tribe started to flee.
+But Grom, after a moment of misgiving and hasty calculation, checked
+the flight sternly. He must, at all risks see the incredible thing
+that was about to happen. And he felt certain that, at this distance
+out upon the crust of the gulf, the tribe would be secure.
+
+The stupendous wave of dust and waving trunks and galloping black
+bulks thundered up at a terrific pace, and fell with irresistible
+impact upon the flank of the marching sambur. These unhappy beasts
+went down like grass before it. They were rolled flat, trodden out
+like a fire in thin grass, annihilated. And the screaming, trumpeting
+monsters, 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, and
+strove to stop. But the belt of pitch was full to the brink with the
+packed bodies of the sambur, and did not look to be a very serious
+barrier to the spacious brown levels beyond it. Moreover, the panic of
+a long flight was upon them, and the rear ranks were thrusting them
+on. The trumpeting leaders were overborne in a twinkling. The
+ponderous feet of the front rank sank into the mass of bodies and
+horns and pitch, stumbled forward, belly deep, and strove to clamber
+out upon the solid-looking further edge. With trunks eagerly
+outstretched as if seeking to grip something, the huge, bat-eared
+heads heaved themselves up. The next moment the treacherous crust
+crumbled away beneath them like an eggshell, and with screams that
+tore the heavens they sank into the gulfs of pitch. The next two or
+three ranks went over on them, trod them deeper down, heaved and
+surged and battled for some moments along the edge of the crumbling
+crust. With mad trumpetings, they were themselves swallowed up in that
+sluggish, implacable flood. Here and there a black trunk, twisting in
+agony, lingered long, awful moments above the pitch. Here and there
+the pallid head of a giraffe, tongue protruding and eyes bursting from
+their sockets, stood up rigid on its long neck and screamed
+hideously.
+
+As the thick tide closed slowly, slowly over its prey, the hosts in
+the rear, having taken alarm at the agonized trumpetings, succeeded by
+a gigantic effort in checking their career. Those nearest the edge of
+doom reared up and fell back upon those next behind, to be ripped with
+frantic tusks in the mad confusion. But presently the whole colossal
+array brought itself to a halt, got itself turned to the left, and
+went thundering off on the trail of the sambur remnants.
+
+Grom stood staring for a long time, with wide, brooding eyes, at the
+still-bubbling and heaving breadths of dark pitch. He was stunned by
+the sudden engulfing and utter disappearance of such a monstrous
+horde. He seemed to see the countless gigantic shapes heaped one upon
+the 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, and
+shouted to the tribe that all was well. Then he set himself once more
+at their head, and led them, slowly and cautiously, onward across the
+dreadful level, till they gained the shelter of that sweetly wooded
+and rivulet-watered hill.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's In the Morning of Time, by Charles G. D. Roberts
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE MORNING OF TIME ***
+
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