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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: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** 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 m�l�e 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-�choed 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 re�merged 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 Gr�m, 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 m�l�e, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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 d�bris 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m, "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 Gr�m.
+
+At Gr�m'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.
+
+"Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m. "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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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. Gr�m
+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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m. And the two
+mounted nimbly.
+
+The bear followed, till the branches began to yield too perilously
+beneath his weight. Then Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m and the girl slipped
+down by the bending tips of the branches, almost as swiftly as
+falling. They snatched up Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m'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, Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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. Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m touched it with his finger.
+It stung smartly, and Gr�m 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, Gr�m
+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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m's knees.
+
+At last Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, "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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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,
+Gr�m and the girl stood erect in the flooding light and scanned the
+strange landscape. Gr�m'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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m had anxious and laborious moments nursing
+them again into activity; and the care of the mysterious things made
+progress slow. Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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. Gr�m
+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.
+
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m. 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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."
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m," 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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m's woman. I have spoken."
+
+And he strode off toward his cave door. Gr�m 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 Gr�m. Before he could launch it, however, his kinsmen, who
+had no wish to bring down upon themselves both Gr�m'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 Gr�m had
+been unjustified, and remembering his past services, ran up and
+took a hand in reducing Mawg to submission. For a few seconds Gr�m
+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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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,
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+"Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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.
+
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m,
+though, perhaps, not less capacious and capable. Gr�m 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 Gr�m's transparent honesty and
+indifference to power which made him so free from jealousy of Gr�m's
+prestige. His shrewd perceptions told him that Gr�m 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 Gr�m returning at this moment to his side, he commanded in a low
+voice: "Let none but ourselves attend or touch the Bright One."
+
+Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m or the Chief so
+much as looked at them.
+
+Soon after sunrise the next day, the Chief and Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m's face, "or she must
+be a priest along with us."
+
+"I think she will be a very good priest," said Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m. 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 Gr�m'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, Gr�m
+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, Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m to turn back from a land
+which held such monsters.
+
+Even Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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
+Gr�m.
+
+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, Gr�m and the girl
+struggled breathlessly to force themselves to a safe distance lest
+they should be crushed in the m�l�e.
+
+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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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
+vertebr� 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 Gr�m and the girl had followed
+breathlessly these astounding encounters. At last Gr�m 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 Gr�m, "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, Gr�m 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. Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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."
+
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m's feet.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m,
+stooping to shake the prostrate form.
+
+Mawg stirred, beginning to recover. Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m
+followed, quickly but coolly. A-ya, who had waited with her eyes
+watchfully on Mawg, stepped close to Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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.
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m.
+
+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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m, and, yelling an obscene taunt, raced
+off to seek himself another retreat before nightfall.
+
+Neither Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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, Gr�m
+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 vertebr� 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m's platform.
+
+Just before dawn the girl slept, while Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m.
+
+"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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m must sometimes sleep!"
+
+Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m; 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), Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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.
+
+Gr�m 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! Gr�m'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.
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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--Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m. 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
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m.
+
+One of the leopards had already succeeded in closing in upon the
+wounded Bow-leg; but at the sight of Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m
+waved them back sternly. They growled with indignation, and one,
+sufficiently prominent in the tribal counsels to dare Gr�m's
+displeasure, protested hotly against this favor to so venomous a foe.
+
+"I demand this fellow, Bawr, as my captive!" said Gr�m.
+
+"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 Gr�m's capture.
+Then Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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
+Gr�m to explain it. The Chief, doubly secure in his dominance by
+reason of Gr�m'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
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m--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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m's doorway with A-ya's baby in his ape-like arms grew
+more and more anxious. As he conveyed to Gr�m, the longer the delay
+the greater the force which was being gathered for the assault.
+
+Having no inkling of Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, "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 Gr�m, 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. Gr�m 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
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m she
+rushed back to the cave. But Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m. 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 Gr�m should not die. And lifting the hero in
+his arms he bore him into the cave.
+
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m sat down in sudden despair. If Mawg, who at least was no coward,
+had fled alone, then surely the girl was dead. Gr�m'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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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,
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m's ear. The harangue came
+soon to an end. The Chief stood up. The bestial crowd parted--and
+through the opening Gr�m 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. Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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
+Gr�m, 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m. Waving A-ya behind
+him, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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,
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m, still voiceless
+and noiseless, was upon him.
+
+Had the vicious swing of Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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--Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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
+Gr�m'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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m'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
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 a�rial
+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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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. Gr�m felt
+that this was progress. The spectators opened their mouths in wonder,
+but durst not venture any comment when Gr�m was at his mysteries.
+
+Plucking the shaft from the earth, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m'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 Gr�m who had done this
+singular thing, smiting unawares from very far off. The old woman must
+have done something to make Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m had adopted it at
+once, throwing away his uncertain and always troublesome fire-tubes of
+hollow bamboo.
+
+Mounting the steep hillside behind the Caves, Gr�m 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
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m's couch. Gr�m 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
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m's
+arm. His flanks were scarred with long wounds but lately healed, and
+Gr�m 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. Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m's head. They were as straight and slim
+as the canes. And their hardness was proved to Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m and Bawr there was the fullest understanding,
+and Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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. Gr�m'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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m, 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.
+
+Gr�m, 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 Gr�m'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
+Gr�m'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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m's amazing achievement. He stood leaning
+upon his spear, calmly watching the last feeble paroxysm, till Gr�m
+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 Gr�m
+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."
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m'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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m stood studying the pair, the mother kept throwing glances of
+horror over her shoulder, as if expecting her assailants to arrive at
+any moment. Gr�m 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. Gr�m'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, Gr�m 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, M�, Gr�m's favorite follower and hunting mate;
+and he had come at speed, being very swift of foot, in answer to
+Gr�m's signal. Breathing quickly, he stood at Gr�m's side, and looked
+down with wonder and dislike upon the crouching woman.
+
+Briefly Gr�m 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. Gr�m, 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."
+
+M�, who was not only brave to recklessness, but who would have
+followed Gr�m through the mouth of hell, sprang forward eagerly. Gr�m,
+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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 M�. "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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m was equally reserved.
+
+With so provocative a mystery waiting to be solved, Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m on the expedition. Gr�m
+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 Gr�m, A-ya, young M�, and a dwarfish kinsman of Gr�m'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
+Gr�m. 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, Gr�m leading the way, with
+A-ya at his heels, then Loob the Scout, and young M� 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 Gr�m, whose restless brain never suffered him to
+sleep by day, kept watch, and pondered the adventure which lay before
+them.
+
+As Gr�m 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. Gr�m'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.
+
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m
+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.
+Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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, Gr�m
+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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m. 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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.
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m did
+not think so. There were no marks of mighty claws on the turf around
+the skeleton.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m an
+added menace, as if some peculiar treachery must lurk behind it.
+
+In the center of an open glade, not far from the skeleton, Gr�m 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 M� 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m drew a long breath as he assured
+himself that their course was taking them far from the fires of A-ya
+and M�.
+
+When Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m's forearm, while its head was as
+big as Gr�m's two great fists put together. It was this head which
+held Gr�m'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. Gr�m
+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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m shattered the gleaming head with his
+club. Then he trod the silver wings to dust.
+
+Having slaked his wrath effectually, Gr�m 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 Gr�m
+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 M�. 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 M�
+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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m and M�
+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. Gr�m 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 M�. 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 Gr�m, leading the way out of the
+circle.
+
+"Let's stop and kill them all!" pleaded young M�, his eyes red with
+rage.
+
+But Gr�m 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
+M� 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 Gr�m and
+A-ya, M� 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, whom, loving him greatly
+he called sometimes his Right Hand and sometimes the Eye of the
+People. At last, it had been settled that Gr�m should lead a party
+through the jungle land to those other hills, to spy out the prospect.
+And Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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 M�;
+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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 a�rial, 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 Gr�m 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 a�rial 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 Gr�m, 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 a�rial 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
+M�, his fiery temper stung by their challenge, clapped an arrow to his
+string and raised his bow to shoot. But Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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,
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m swung himself to the ground. As he reached it both
+M� 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
+Gr�m, 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, Gr�m
+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.
+
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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, Gr�m 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 M�, 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m; 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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, Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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?"
+
+"_Gr�m!_" 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
+Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, with resolute confidence.
+
+"If Hobbo had not dropped the fire!" said young M� bitterly.
+
+The giant groaned in self-abasement, and beat his chest with his great
+fists. But Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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. Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 M� eagerly. But Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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, Gr�m stabbed down wildly into the
+whirling struggle, and his example was followed at once by Loob and
+young M�. 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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m's was glued in fascination to the baleful scene.
+But Gr�m 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 Gr�m, "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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m's giant slave, the
+lame Bow-leg, Ook-ootsk, to guard the little children and the tribal
+fires. As Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m when he should return. She
+had the right to them, not only because she was the mate of Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m was convinced that it must be sought for
+far afield. Life had been running uneventfully for months at the Great
+Caves, and Gr�m's restless spirit was craving new knowledge, new
+adventure.
+
+On this quest of the arrow Gr�m 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--Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 d�tour 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
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m. 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, his eyes still fixed upon the monsters.
+
+"Oh! The bees! The terrible bees!" whispered A-ya. "Where can we go?"
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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
+Gr�m. "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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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! Gr�m, 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m
+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 d�bris, 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 Gr�m
+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 d�bris, 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m,
+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 Gr�m. 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m,
+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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m
+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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 d�bris 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, "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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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?"
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m. "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, Gr�m'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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m. "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."
+
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m's side.
+
+"Go," ordered Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, in a voice of awe. And his
+followers gasped, as the colossal shapes shouldered up into full
+view.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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. Gr�m 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. Gr�m,
+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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m, 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.
+
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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, Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 M�, 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 Gr�m 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
+Gr�m 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,
+Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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,
+Gr�m 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. Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m'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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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 Gr�m. 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m'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, Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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. Gr�m, 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 Gr�m 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.
+
+Gr�m'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,
+Gr�m 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 Gr�m 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, Gr�m 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 Gr�m, 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.
+
+Gr�m 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
+
+
+
+
+
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+<title>
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of In the Morning of Time, by Charles G. D. Roberts.
+</title>
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+<pre>
+
+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: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** 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
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<hr class='pb' />
+<h1>IN THE MORNING OF TIME</h1>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:2.2em;margin-top:50px;margin-bottom:1.2em;'>IN THE<br />MORNING OF TIME</p>
+<p class='tp' >BY</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.2em;'>CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:0.8em;font-style:italic;'>Author of &#8220;The Kindred of the Wild,&#8221; etc.</p>
+
+<div style='margin:50px auto 100px auto; text-align:center;'>
+<img alt='emblem' src='images/illus-emb.png' />
+</div>
+
+<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:50px;'><span style='font-size:0.8em;'>NEW YORK</span><br />
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY<br />
+<span style='font-size:0.8em;'>PUBLISHERS</span></p>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:smaller;'><span style='font-style:italic;'>Copyright, 1922, by</span><br />
+<span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Frederick A. Stokes Company</span></p>
+
+<hr class='copy' />
+
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:smaller;font-style:italic;margin-bottom:20px;'>All rights reserved</p>
+
+<p class='tp' style='font-style:italic;font-size:smaller;'>Printed in the United States of America</p>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<table border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>
+<tr>
+  <td align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'><span style='font-size:small;'>CHAPTER</span></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align='right'><span style='font-size:small;'>PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>I</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The World Without Man</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_I_THE_WORLD_WITHOUT_MAN'>1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>II</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The King of the Triple Horn</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_II_THE_KING_OF_THE_TRIPLE_HORN'>20</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>III</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Finding of Fire</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_III_THE_FINDING_OF_FIRE'>41</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>IV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Children of the Shining One</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_IV_THE_CHILDREN_OF_THE_SHINING_ONE'>70</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>V</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Puller-Down of Trees</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_V_THE_PULLERDOWN_OF_TREES'>97</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Battle of the Brands</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_VI_THE_BATTLE_OF_THE_BRANDS'>123</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Rescue of A-ya</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_VII_THE_RESCUE_OF_AYA'>149</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Bending of the Bow</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_VIII_THE_BENDING_OF_THE_BOW'>174</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>IX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Destroying Splendor</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_IX_THE_DESTROYING_SPLENDOR'>198</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>X</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Terrors of the Dark</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_X_THE_TERRORS_OF_THE_DARK'>219</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Feasting of the Cave Folk</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XI_THE_FEASTING_OF_THE_CAVE_FOLK'>243</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>On the Face of the Waters</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XII_ON_THE_FACE_OF_THE_WATERS'>259</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Fear</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XIII_THE_FEAR'>278</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XIV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>The Lake of Long Sleep</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_XIV_THE_LAKE_OF_LONG_SLEEP'>295</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<h2>IN THE MORNING OF TIME</h2>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_1' name='page_1'></a>1</span></div>
+<p style='font-size:1.3em; text-align:center; margin-top:3em; margin-bottom:1em;'>In The Morning of Time</p>
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 0; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='CHAPTER_I_THE_WORLD_WITHOUT_MAN' id='CHAPTER_I_THE_WORLD_WITHOUT_MAN'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h3>THE WORLD WITHOUT MAN</h3>
+</div>
+<p>It lay apparently afloat on the sluggish, faintly
+discolored tide&ndash;&ndash;a placid, horse-faced, shovel-nosed
+head, with bumpy holes for ears and immense
+round eyes of a somewhat anxious mildness.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The water at this point was almost fresh, because
+the estuary, though fully two miles wide, was filled
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_2' name='page_2'></a>2</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Far out across the water one of these creatures
+was flapping slowly in from the sea. Its wings&ndash;&ndash;eighteen
+feet across from tip to tip&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span>
+watched it from the water&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Some fifty feet away, nearer shore, the harmless-looking
+head which had been the source and inspirer
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The body of this amazing being was thrice or four
+times the bulk of the mightiest elephant. It stood
+highest&ndash;&ndash;a good thirteen feet&ndash;&ndash;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&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;perhaps
+lest the delicate tip, if left too distant, might
+fall a prey to some significant but agile marauder.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span></p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span>
+the look of anxiety once more into his round, saucer-eyes.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s feet.</p>
+<p>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 &#8220;mares&#8217;
+tails,&#8221; and waited to see what strange thing would
+happen next.</p>
+<p>He had not long to wait. That hideous, mangled
+heap there, sweating blood in the noon sun, seemed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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 m&ecirc;l&eacute;e one
+of the smaller revellers was himself pounced upon
+and devoured.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+Then, hooting once more with satisfaction,
+they spread their batlike vanes and flapped darkly off
+again to their red watch-tower on the cliff.</p>
+<p>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 &#8220;mares&#8217;
+tails.&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>
+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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>But at this instant there was a clattering of the
+plated hide, and that armed tail lashed out with lightning
+swiftness, like a porcupine&#8217;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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span>
+the grim bird-lizards from the cliff swooped down and
+hovered, hooting over his path, apparently disappointed
+at his triumph.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Warmed and well fed, his eyes half-sheathed in
+their membraneous lids, he gazed out vacantly across
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s shoulders, and buried his fangs in the base
+of that columnar neck.</p>
+<p>The colossus, for the first time, was overwhelmed
+with terror. He gave vent to a shrill, bleating bellow&ndash;&ndash;an
+absurdly inadequate utterance to issue from this
+mountainous frame&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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-&euml;choed
+from the red cliffs and set all the drowsing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>The colossus, so deeply wounded that his trail threw
+up great clots and bubbles of red foam, swam onward
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span>
+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 &#8220;mares&#8217;
+tails.&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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 re&euml;merged to view.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>
+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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_II_THE_KING_OF_THE_TRIPLE_HORN' id='CHAPTER_II_THE_KING_OF_THE_TRIPLE_HORN'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h3>THE KING OF THE TRIPLE HORN</h3>
+</div>
+<p>It was a little later in the Morning of Time&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;with
+the tip of his massive, lizard-like tail still in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>
+water&ndash;&ndash;and shook a shower from the hollows of his
+vast and strangely armored head.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;horned, cased in horn, and hooked like the beak
+of a parrot&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+bamboo, jobo, mango and mahogany, with here and
+there a thicket of canary-flowered acacia, bristling
+with the most formidable of thorns.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Almost from the roots of these two terrific weapons
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>The antagonist who had come in answer to the
+giant&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;like those of a walrus, but
+much shorter, sharper and more effective.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s horns and unprotected front were
+no match for the impenetrable armor and leveled
+lances of the King&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>The other spectator was not excited at all. He was
+a large, ape-like man&ndash;&ndash;one would have said, rather, a
+manlike ape, had it not been for the look in his eyes.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>For perhaps a couple of minutes, now, the King
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>
+his head up sharply at this unexpected assault, drove
+the long thorns well home.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;probably one of his mates&ndash;&ndash;and together
+they disappeared, with heavy crashings, in the rank
+tangle of the swamp-growths.</p>
+<p>The man-creature descended from his refuge, carrying
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s mate, not quite so huge, but equally appalling.
+Behind her was an impenetrable wall of thorn-acacia.
+There was only one refuge&ndash;&ndash;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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span></p>
+<p>A mile away the man heard it. He gave one deep-chested
+shout in answer, and then came running in
+silence, saving his breath.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s
+great foot crushed her and the wailing babe
+out of existence together.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s foot to know that all was over. Beyond
+one hoarse groan he uttered not a sound. But
+blindly&ndash;&ndash;for he had never yet practised such an art&ndash;&ndash;he
+hurled his ragged club at the nearest monster.
+It rebounded like a baby&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>
+Dinosaur&#8217;s eye, and smashed it in the socket. She
+roared with agony; and the two, side by side, came
+lunging towards him.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The black herds of the Dinoceras stopped feeding
+all at once, and raised their vicious heads and
+stared.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span>
+array, a reserve of less mass and strength than the
+ranks of the bulls, but of an invincible mother-fury.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>It was a strange, disconcerting sound, that laughter,
+and the nearest Dinoceras, disturbed by it, edged away
+and crowded against his neighbor&#8217;s flank in an inexplicable
+apprehension.</p>
+<p>The next moment the stupendous opposing forces
+met with a shock that, to the man&#8217;s overstrung senses,
+seemed to make the very daylight reel. There was
+no space for evasion or man&oelig;uver. 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>But here they were stopped. The calves were behind
+that line.</p>
+<p>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&#8217; 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span>
+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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_III_THE_FINDING_OF_FIRE' id='CHAPTER_III_THE_FINDING_OF_FIRE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h3>THE FINDING OF FIRE</h3>
+</div>
+<p style='text-align:center;'>I</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Soon afterwards, appearing from no man could say
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;each for himself, fortunately&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>So dragged by half the desperate winter. Then
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The Bow-legs, their yellow skin showing through the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span>
+down and tearing then with crooked, clawlike fingers.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The center of the Hillmen&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>But his club was much smaller than that shattering
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+mace of porphyry wielded by the Chief&ndash;&ndash;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
+m&ecirc;l&eacute;e, he held it secured to his wrist by a thong of
+hide.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s
+jealousy. This for several reasons. He had always
+loyally supported the Chief&#8217;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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>In his remote cave Gr&ocirc;m had had the companionship
+of his family, consisting of his old mother, his
+two wives, and his four children&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>Conspicuous among the fighters at Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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&#8217;s movements.</p>
+<p>Suddenly from the rocks above came a shrill cry.
+To Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>From the left wall a ceaseless shower of stones
+came down upon their heads; but from the right, for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>
+a few moments, only a rain of pebbles and dust, which
+blinded them and choked their hideous, upturned
+nostrils.</p>
+<p>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 d&eacute;bris 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.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>II</p>
+<p>A white, high-sailing moon streamed down into
+the amphitheater, where the scarred remnant of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, leaning on his club,
+staring at the moon, apparently lost in dreams.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have heard much foolishness,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but also
+some wisdom. And the greatest wisdom has come
+from the lips of my father yonder, Alp the old.&#8221; He
+pointed to a decrepit figure, whose bowed head was
+hidden under a mass of white hair. &#8220;My father&#8217;s
+eyes are blind with age,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>
+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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m,
+who had turned on his club and listened to the Chief
+with shining eyes, now stepped forward into the circle
+and spoke.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bawr is our Chief,&#8221; said he, in a clear, calm voice;
+&#8220;not only because he is our mightiest in war, but because
+he is also our wisest in counsel. When do we
+go?&#8221;</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s support.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Two moons hence,&#8221; he answered presently. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m, &#8220;if Bawr will allow me, I will
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span>
+go and find a place for us, and come again quickly
+and lead the tribe thither by the shortest way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is good!&#8221; said Bawr, quick to see what dangerous
+wanderings might be spared to the tribe by this
+plan. &#8220;When will you go?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In to-morrow&#8217;s morning-red,&#8221; answered Gr&ocirc;m.</p>
+<p>At Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gr&ocirc;m is a traitor!&#8221; he cried. &#8220;He deserts us in
+our need. Let him not go, Chief!&#8221;</p>
+<p>A growl of protest went up from his hearers. The
+girl faced round upon him with blazing eyes. Gr&ocirc;m
+gave him an indifferent glance, and turned away, half
+smiling. The Chief struck the rock with his club,
+and said coldly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mawg is young, and his words are foolish. Gr&ocirc;m
+is a true man. He shall do as he will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The youth&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>
+council broke up, and all slipped off, chattering, into
+their caves.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>As the first pink light crept up the sky, Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>
+whom he himself rather held in contempt as futile.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>As the sun got low, Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s feet.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was afraid for you,&#8221; she answered, without
+looking up. &#8220;You go to such great dangers. I could
+not stay with the tribe, and wait.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You think I need help?&#8221; he asked, with a self-confident
+look in his eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You did need me in the battle!&#8221; answered the girl
+proudly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;True!&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m. &#8220;But for you I should now
+have been sleeping under the stones and the wind.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could not stay without you,&#8221; said the girl again.
+&#8220;Also, I was afraid of Mawg,&#8221; she added cunningly.</p>
+<p>A wave of jealous wrath surged through Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+veins.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If Mawg had troubled you, I would have killed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>
+him!&#8221; said he fiercely. And, snatching the girl to
+her feet, he crushed her for a moment vehemently to
+his great breast.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But why,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;did you follow me so
+secretly all day?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was afraid you would be angry, and send me
+back,&#8221; she answered, with a sigh of content.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could not have sent you back,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m, his
+indifference quite forgotten. &#8220;But come, we must find
+a place for the night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>And hand in hand they ran to a great tree which
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>III</p>
+<p>For three weeks Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Had Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m was filled with interest
+at the novel phenomena before them, she thrust aside
+her fears and assumed a like eagerness on the subject.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m lingered a few moments below, letting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>
+the water trickle down and over his great muscles
+by handfuls. Then he threw himself down upon his
+face and drank deep.</p>
+<p>While he was in this helpless position&ndash;&ndash;his sleepless
+vigilance for the moment at fault&ndash;&ndash;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. Gr&ocirc;m bounded to his feet,
+and darted for the tree. But the monster&ndash;&ndash;a gray
+bear, of a bulk beyond that of the hugest grizzly&ndash;&ndash;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&#8217;s snout, and sank deep into its shoulder.
+With a roar, the beast halted to claw it forth. And in
+that moment Gr&ocirc;m swung himself up into the branches,
+dropping both his spears as he did so.</p>
+<p>The bear, mad with pain and fury, reared himself
+against the trunk and began to draw himself up.
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We must lead him up, then drop down and run,&#8221;
+said Gr&ocirc;m. And the two mounted nimbly.</p>
+<p>The bear followed, till the branches began to yield
+too perilously beneath his weight. Then Gr&ocirc;m and
+the girl slipped over into the next tree. As they did so
+another bear even huger than the first, and apparently
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+her mate, appeared below, glanced up with shrewd, implacable
+eyes, and proceeded to climb the second tree.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m looked at the girl with piercing anxiety such
+as he had never known before.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can you run, very fast?&#8221; he demanded.</p>
+<p>The girl laughed, her terror almost forgotten in
+her pride at having once more saved him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ran from the wolves,&#8221; she reminded him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then we must run, perhaps very far,&#8221; answered
+Gr&ocirc;m, reassured, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When both bears were high in the two trees, Gr&ocirc;m
+and the girl slipped down by the bending tips of the
+branches, almost as swiftly as falling. They snatched
+up Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s two spears and A-ya&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>The girl ran, as she had said, well&ndash;&ndash;so well that
+Gr&ocirc;m 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,
+Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There will be ledges,&#8221; he said, &#8220;where we can defend
+ourselves, and where you can rest.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s heart stood still in awe and amazement,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+and for a second he paused. The girl shut her eyes
+in unspeakable terror, and her knees gave way beneath
+her. As she sank, Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If they are gods, those bright, dancing things,&#8221;
+said Gr&ocirc;m, with a confidence he was far from feeling,
+&#8220;they will save us. If they are devils, I will
+fight them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A little to the right appeared a gap in the leaping
+barrier, an opening some fifty feet across. Gr&ocirc;m 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, Gr&ocirc;m had swung her up into his
+arms, but as he did so he looked back.</p>
+<p>The bears were no longer pursuing. A spear&#8217;s-throw
+back they had stopped, growling and whining,
+and swaying their mountainous forms from side to
+side in angry irresolution.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They fear the bright, dancing things,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m
+to himself; and added, with a throb of exultation,
+&#8220;which I do not fear.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Seeing that their intended prey made no further
+effort to flee, the two monsters grew still more excited.
+For a moment Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m 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,
+Gr&ocirc;m touched it with his finger. It stung smartly,
+and Gr&ocirc;m 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, Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span>
+them. Well, he did not fear them, he said proudly in
+his heart. Aloud he said to A-ya:</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Shining Dancers are our friends, but they do
+not like to be touched. If you touch them, they bite.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>With a shout, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s haunch. The
+long fur blazed, and, in a frenzy of terror, the great
+beasts went crashing off through the coverts. The fire
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span>
+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. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s heart came near bursting with exultation,
+but he disdained to show it. He turned to
+the girl, and said quietly: &#8220;They will not come back.&#8221;
+And the girl threw herself at his feet in adoration.</p>
+<p>And now for hours Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s knees.</p>
+<p>At last Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;See,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m, &#8220;I have made the bright Dancing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span>
+Ones my servants. The tribe shall come here. And
+we shall be the masters of all things.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_IV_THE_CHILDREN_OF_THE_SHINING_ONE' id='CHAPTER_IV_THE_CHILDREN_OF_THE_SHINING_ONE'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>THE CHILDREN OF THE SHINING ONE</h3>
+</div>
+<p style='text-align:center;'>I</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>From time to time Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span></p>
+<p>A louder roaring came out of the shadows,
+closer than before, and he saw A-ya&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>With neither the bears nor the great hyenas did
+Gr&ocirc;m 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,
+Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s shaggy head as
+he ran, was too much for them, and they had slunk
+back discreetly into the shadows.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>This stupendous fact established clearly, Gr&ocirc;m
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217; sleep in the vital warmth, Gr&ocirc;m
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span>
+and the girl stood erect in the flooding light and scanned
+the strange landscape. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>That it was infested with all those monstrous beasts
+which were Man&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>When the two started on their journey back to the
+Country of the Little Hills, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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
+Gr&ocirc;m had anxious and laborious moments nursing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+them again into activity; and the care of the mysterious
+things made progress slow. Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s nerve was of steel.</p>
+<p>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.
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>After this they journeyed slowly, Gr&ocirc;m tending
+the brands with vigilant care, and striving to break
+down the girl&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;which
+she did with head bowed in awe&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+of his own creation should prove false when his eye
+was not upon them.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have let the Bright One escape,&#8221; said he.
+&#8220;But do not be afraid. He lives back there in the
+valley of the bears, and I will capture him again.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>II</p>
+<p>It galled Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>It was toward sunset, and the long, rosy glow was
+flooding the little amphitheater wherein the remnants
+of the tribe were gathered, when Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Hardly noticing, or not heeding if he noticed that
+the tribe offered no vociferous welcome, and seemed
+sullenly surprised at his appearance, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m.
+Her heart swelled with rage, and her dark-maned head
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>A haughty look came over Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s face, his broad
+shoulders squared themselves, and he met the Chief&#8217;s
+eyes sternly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have done the bidding of Bawr the Chief,&#8221; he
+said, in a clear voice, so that all the tribe might hear.
+&#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s words. Slowly the anger
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have been accused,&#8221; said he at length, slowly,
+&#8220;of deserting the tribe in our weakness&ndash;&ndash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>A puzzled look had come over Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s face at the
+word &#8220;accused&#8221;; then his deep eyes blazed, and he
+broke in upon the Chief&#8217;s speech without ceremony.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Show me my accusers!&#8221; he demanded harshly.
+The Chief waved his hand for silence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;In our weakness!&#8221; he repeated. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m turned, and, with a quick, decisive motion,
+drew A-ya to his side.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bawr the Chief knows that I am his servant, and
+a true man!&#8221; said he sternly. &#8220;I did not steal the
+girl. She followed me, and I had no thought of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Angry jeers came from Mawg&#8217;s corner, but Gr&ocirc;m
+smiled coldly, and went on:</p>
+<p>&#8220;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+done with them quickly. For I have much to tell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not so, Gr&ocirc;m,&#8221; said the Chief, stretching out his
+hand. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m hesitated, fearing
+lest annoyance should befall A-ya if he left her
+alone with his enemies.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And the girl, Chief?&#8221; said he. &#8220;I would not have
+her troubled.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Bawr turned. He swept a comprehensive and significant
+glance over the gaping crowd.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The girl A-ya,&#8221; said he in his great voice which
+thundered over the amphitheater, &#8220;is Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s woman.
+I have spoken.&#8221;</p>
+<p>And he strode off toward his cave door. Gr&ocirc;m
+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.</p>
+<p>But as the meaning of the Chief&#8217;s words penetrated
+Mawg&#8217;s dull wits he gave vent to a great bellow of
+rage, and snatched up a spear to hurl at Gr&ocirc;m. Before
+he could launch it, however, his kinsmen, who
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span>
+had no wish to bring down upon themselves both
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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&#8217;s action that their
+bitterness against Gr&ocirc;m had been unjustified, and remembering
+his past services, ran up and took a hand
+in reducing Mawg to submission. For a few seconds
+Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m 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,
+&#8220;You will see me again!&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;One more good warrior gone!&#8221; muttered an old
+man through his bush of matted white beard.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span></p>
+<p>That night Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;except the women, who
+were needed as mothers&ndash;&ndash;should be killed as tribal
+traitors, at sight.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>III</p>
+<p>As was natural since he was trying to present a
+totally new conception, with no known analogies
+save in the lightning and the sun, Gr&ocirc;m found it impossible
+to convey to the Chief&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s club and spear.
+And he realized readily enough that with such an ally
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>The attempts of the girl, meanwhile, to explain
+about the fire and Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;new hordes of the beast-men, the gaping-nosed
+Bow-legs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gr&ocirc;m is a true man,&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+from venturing to molest them. By the Chief&#8217;s
+orders they maintained a noisy chatter, with laughter
+and shouting, as soon as they felt themselves safely
+beyond range of the beast-men&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;and it was their rule to make camp while the
+sun was yet several hours high&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;perhaps the same
+beast which some days earlier, had driven Gr&ocirc;m
+and the girl into the tree-tops&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>
+aside, and several of the weapons went deep into the
+monster&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m, coming from the front. The
+Chief, closing in fearlessly, swung his club with all
+his strength across the beast&#8217;s front, blinding one eye,
+and confusing him for the fraction of a moment. And
+in that moment, Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>The incident caused a day&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>As they approached the valley whose mouth was
+guarded by the line of volcanic fire, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s hesitation
+he strode to the front, and stood like Gr&ocirc;m, 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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span></p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m gave him a quick look of approval. &#8220;Tell
+the people,&#8221; said he, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When the people&ndash;&ndash;trembling, staring with fascinated
+eyes at the dancing array, and shrinking nervously
+from the strange warmth&ndash;&ndash;had all been gathered
+into the open space between the fire and the thickets,
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, though, perhaps, not less capacious
+and capable. Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s transparent
+honesty and indifference to power which made
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>
+him so free from jealousy of Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s prestige. His
+shrewd perceptions told him that Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take this, and hold it for me,&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Strange,&#8221; said Bawr, in a voice for all the tribe
+to hear, &#8220;the Shining One will not suffer Ne-boo to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>
+touch him.&#8221; With the air of a high priest he picked
+the brand up, and held it again into the flames. And
+Gr&ocirc;m returning at this moment to his side, he commanded
+in a low voice: &#8220;Let none but ourselves attend
+or touch the Bright One.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m, 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 Gr&ocirc;m would
+not dream of.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>
+corroded wood which the flames had licked, and in the
+angry wounds of Ne-boo. At the same time they saw
+their Chief and Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>But what made the deepest, the most ineffaceable
+impression on the minds of the tribe was to see Gr&ocirc;m
+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, Gr&ocirc;m
+hurled one of his flaming weapons after the fugitives&ndash;&ndash;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. Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span>
+with scrupulous precision and unfailing nerve, though
+quite prepared to see the red whirlwind suddenly turn
+back and blot himself, the audacious Gr&ocirc;m, 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 Gr&ocirc;m or the Chief so much as looked
+at them.</p>
+<p>Soon after sunrise the next day, the Chief and
+Gr&ocirc;m, 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&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>When all was ordered to his satisfaction, the Chief
+called Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s eyes took on a certain
+illumination at the sight of her, a look which the Chief
+had never observed in any man&#8217;s eyes before. But
+he thought little of it, for his mind was full of other
+matters.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is well,&#8221; said he presently, in a low voice, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is good,&#8221; agreed Gr&ocirc;m, whose brain was
+busy devising other ways of making the wild flames
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>
+serviceable to man. &#8220;But,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;there is A-ya.
+She knows as much about it as you and I.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Chief pondered a moment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Either the girl must die,&#8221; said he, eyeing Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+face, &#8220;or she must be a priest along with us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think she will be a very good priest,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m
+drily, his eyes resting upon her.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And henceforth,&#8221; he concluded, &#8220;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
+&#8216;The Children of the Shining One,&#8217; under whose protection
+I declare you.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_V_THE_PULLERDOWN_OF_TREES' id='CHAPTER_V_THE_PULLERDOWN_OF_TREES'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h3>THE PULLER-DOWN OF TREES</h3>
+</div>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>It was just this country at the other side of the
+hills which most appealed to the restless imagination
+of Gr&ocirc;m. Within the valley&ndash;&ndash;which widened out,
+as it receded from its fiery gateway, to enclose league
+upon league of fertile plain&ndash;&ndash;was good hunting, along
+with an abundance of roots, fruits and edible herbs.
+But in Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s heart burned that spirit of unquenchable
+expectation which has led the race of Man upwards
+through all obstacles&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>During these few weeks since coming to the Valley
+of the Fire, Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>With one of these slow torches alight, and several
+spare ones slung over his shoulders, Gr&ocirc;m 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.
+Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;romantic love not yet having come openly
+to these men of the Morning of Time. So Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>
+in sight, and would then have followed him.</p>
+<p>Like Gr&ocirc;m, 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, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>As they ascended the ragged slopes, vegetation grew
+sparse, and when toward nightfall they gained the pass
+which Gr&ocirc;m was making for&ndash;&ndash;a deep cleft between two
+steep red and purple peaks&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>It was a vast, rolling plain, golden-green with rank,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Somewhat to the girl&#8217;s apprehension, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m 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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span></p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;the hunters
+and the hunted alike&ndash;&ndash;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 Gr&ocirc;m to turn back from a
+land which held such monsters.</p>
+<p>Even Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m stooped and studied these footprints, pondering
+them with knit brows. What manner of giant it
+might be which moved on such colossal and misshapen
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+members it was beyond his wits to guess. But of a
+surety it was a fine roadmaker!</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m understood at once that a herd
+of pig-tapirs&ndash;&ndash;heavy-footed, timorous beasts, as tall
+as heifers&ndash;&ndash;were sweeping down upon them in mad
+flight before some unknown pursuer.</p>
+<p>Against that blind panic, that headlong frantic rush,
+he knew that blazing brands would avail nothing. He
+clutched the girl by the hand. &#8220;Come!&#8221; he ordered.
+And they fled side by side down the trail.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>
+at him from under her dark tangle of hair with
+eyes of passionate possession.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Caught thus fairly between the devil before, and
+the deep sea of trampling hoofs behind, Gr&ocirc;m had no
+choice. A second&#8217;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&#8217;s hand, he ran back a little way, seeking
+to draw the two perils together, and give them an
+opportunity to distract each other&#8217;s attention.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m.</p>
+<p>The rhinoceros was diverted for an instant. The
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m and the girl struggled
+breathlessly to force themselves to a safe distance
+lest they should be crushed in the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>They came up, spluttering and choking; but as soon
+as she could catch breath the girl laughed, whereupon
+the grimness of Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>For a moment or two Gr&ocirc;m looked into the girl&#8217;s
+eyes steadily, conveying to her without a word the
+whole tremendous significance of their loss. The girl
+responded, after a second&#8217;s dismay, with a look of trust
+and adoration which brought a rush of warmth to
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;two immense
+black lions, who had apparently been playing with their
+prey like cats.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Squealing to split the ears, the pig-tapirs came galloping
+past the tree, making for a piece of water some
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>
+furlongs further on, where doubtless they hoped to
+evade both the lion and the rhinoceros. But they
+had yet another adversary to reckon with.</p>
+<p>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
+Gr&ocirc;m had ever dreamed of. And he knew that the
+maker of the mysterious trail and those tremendous
+footprints was before him.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Its baby!&#8221; muttered the girl, with a little indrawn
+breath of sympathy.</p>
+<p>Then the strange being sat up again to meet and
+ward off the rush of the maddened pig-tapirs.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span>
+plunged into the monster&#8217;s paunch; but at the same
+time one of those gigantic armed hands fell irresistibly
+on his neck, shattering the vertebr&aelig; through
+all their deep protection of hide and muscle. He collapsed
+with an explosive grunt; and the giant hands
+tossed him aside.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>From their place in the tree Gr&ocirc;m and the girl
+had followed breathlessly these astounding encounters.
+At last Gr&ocirc;m spoke:</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is a country of very great beasts,&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We must go back and recover the Shining One.
+It is not well for us to go on without him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; agreed the girl eagerly. For all her courage
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>
+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. &#8220;Yes!&#8221;
+she repeated. &#8220;Let us go back for the Shining One,
+lest he be angry at us for having put him in the water.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But for yet a day more we will stay here in this
+tree, and rest and sleep in safety,&#8221; continued Gr&ocirc;m,
+&#8220;that we may travel the more swiftly, till we get beyond
+the grasses.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s, now
+gazing at her man with ardent eyes, now staring out
+apprehensively across the sun-drenched, perilous landscape.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+sympathies went out to them, and his impulse was to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They are spent. They&#8217;ll never get here!&#8221; he
+muttered anxiously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No!&#8221; said A-ya, with blank unconcern. &#8220;The lions
+will get them. It&#8217;s Mawg, and his two cousins.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m growled an exclamation of astonishment.
+The girl&#8217;s eyes&ndash;&ndash;or her intuitions&ndash;&ndash;were keener than
+his. But he saw at a second glance that she was
+right.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s ears,
+for he glanced back over his shoulder. He was near
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>
+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, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s plenty of time!&#8221; muttered Gr&ocirc;m, and
+dropped upon his feet in the middle of the trail. The
+girl came in mad haste after him, but at his sharp
+command &#8220;Stay there!&#8221; she contented herself with
+slipping out upon the lowest branch, just over his head,
+and holding her spear ready.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Kill him!&#8221; she cried. But Gr&ocirc;m seemed not to
+hear.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>
+snarl of fury he hurled his club straight at Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+face, missing him only by a hand&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+feet.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m hesitated, wondering how he could get this
+inert weight up into the tree. The girl did not understand
+his hesitation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Kill him!&#8221; she hissed, leaning down eagerly from
+her branch overhead.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, he&#8217;s a great warrior, and the tribe needs him,&#8221;
+answered Gr&ocirc;m, stooping to shake the prostrate form.</p>
+<p>Mawg stirred, beginning to recover. Gr&ocirc;m shook
+him again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Up into the tree, quick!&#8221; he ordered in a loud,
+sharp voice. &#8220;The lions are coming.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mawg roused himself, sat up, and stared with a
+look of bewilderment changing swiftly into hate.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Up!&#8221; shouted Gr&ocirc;m again. &#8220;The tree. They&#8217;re
+coming!&#8221;</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m followed,
+quickly but coolly. A-ya, who had waited with her
+eyes watchfully on Mawg, stepped close to Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+side; and all three swung upwards into the higher
+branches as the two lions arrived beneath.</p>
+<p>Glaring up into the tree with shrewd, malevolent
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>
+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
+Gr&ocirc;m presently turned his attention to his rescued
+rival.</p>
+<p>Mawg was sitting on the next branch, a good
+spear&#8217;s length distant, and glowering at A-ya&#8217;s lithe
+shapeliness with eyes of savage greed. Gr&ocirc;m knit his
+brows, and significantly passed an arm about the girl&#8217;s
+shoulders. Mawg shifted his attention to him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want of me?&#8221; he demanded, in a
+thick, guttural voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought you ran as if you did not want the
+lions to eat you,&#8221; answered Gr&ocirc;m.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>They presented a significant contrast. Both, physically,
+superb specimens of their race&ndash;&ndash;the highest then
+evolved upon the youthful earth&ndash;&ndash;the elder man, in
+his ample forehead and calm, reasoning eyes, displayed
+all the promise of the future; while the youth,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m and A-ya look white by
+contrast.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want of me?&#8221; he demanded again,
+as if he had had no answer before.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The tribe has too few warriors left. I will take
+you back to the tribe!&#8221; replied Gr&ocirc;m with authority.</p>
+<p>Mawg curled back his thick lips from his great
+yellow dog-teeth in a snarling laugh of incredulity.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You want to kill me!&#8221; said he, nodding his
+head.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s eye. Gr&ocirc;m
+smiled slowly, and fell to playing with a heavy strand
+of A-ya&#8217;s hair which had fallen over his arm. But to
+this caress the girl paid no attention. She was puzzled
+and outraged at Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s action in protecting his rival.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+Her nostrils dilated, and a red spot glowed angrily
+under each cheek-bone.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span>
+The girl laughed, whereupon he shot her a menacing
+look which so enraged her that she raised her spear
+as if to transfix him.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m
+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&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m, and, yelling an obscene taunt, raced off to
+seek himself another retreat before nightfall.</p>
+<p>Neither Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m saw that unless he could
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>
+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, Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m just eluded the strange attack by
+stepping aside nimbly; and quick as thought A-ya&#8217;s
+spear slashed the dreadful red tongue as it reached
+flickering after her lord&#8217;s ankles. The next moment,
+seeing the monster&#8217;s throat upstretched and unguarded,
+Gr&ocirc;m 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 vertebr&aelig;
+of the monster&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad we are rid of that Mawg.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You should have killed him!&#8221; said the girl curtly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But why?&#8221; demanded Gr&ocirc;m, in some surprise. In
+his eyes the fellow was a valuable piece of property
+belonging to the tribe, a fighting asset.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He wants <i>me</i>!&#8221; answered the girl, meeting his eyes
+resentfully.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m let his eyes roam all over her&ndash;&ndash;face, hair
+and form&ndash;&ndash;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&#8217;s face before, or even dreamed of such
+a look as possible.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course, he wants you,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m, wondering,
+as he spoke, at the ring of his own voice. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>And at that the girl forgot her anger, and forgave
+him for having neglected to kill Mawg.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span>
+howled, snarled and wrangled in knots over the widely
+scattered carcases, each group watching its neighbors
+with suspicion and deadly animosity.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+platform.</p>
+<p>Just before dawn the girl slept, while Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s arm, shuddering strongly.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;But&ndash;&ndash;what is it?&#8221; he asked, in a tender voice,
+stroking her heavy mane.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was afraid!&#8221; she answered, like a child.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What were you afraid of?&#8221; asked Gr&ocirc;m.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was afraid of Mawg. I <i>am</i> afraid of him!&#8221; she
+answered, sitting up and shaking the hair from her
+eyes, and staring out fearfully over the gray transparent
+plains.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why should you fear Mawg?&#8221; demanded Gr&ocirc;m
+proudly. &#8220;Am not I your man? And am not I always
+with you? Many such mad brutes as Mawg could not
+take you from me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; answered the girl, &#8220;that he and such as
+he would be as straws in my lord&#8217;s hands. But&ndash;&ndash;even
+Gr&ocirc;m must sometimes sleep!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m laughed gently at her forebodings.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He must sleep now, indeed, for we have a long
+and perilous journey before us,&#8221; 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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_VI_THE_BATTLE_OF_THE_BRANDS' id='CHAPTER_VI_THE_BATTLE_OF_THE_BRANDS'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h3>THE BATTLE OF THE BRANDS</h3>
+</div>
+<p style='text-align:center;'>I</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s orders every
+warrior had taken to himself either two or three wives,
+so that none of the widows had been left unmated.
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Singularly happy with the girl A-ya, Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;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, Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;a solution which had seemed to meet
+with the unqualified approval of A-ya.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span>
+of the storm, no less than of the monsters which fled
+so terror-stricken before him.</p>
+<p>In the early spring, the girl A-ya bore a child to
+Gr&ocirc;m; a big-limbed, vigorous boy, with shapely head
+and spacious brow. In this event, and in the mother&#8217;s
+happiness about it (a happiness that seemed to the rest
+of the women to savor of foolish extravagance),
+Gr&ocirc;m felt a gladness which dignity forbade him to
+betray.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>One day Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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.
+Gr&ocirc;m halted abruptly, slipped behind a tree, crouched,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>It was a human footprint, but much larger than his
+own, or those of his tribe; and Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s beard, and the
+stiff hairs on the nape of his corded neck, bristled with
+hostility at the sight of it.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m slipped under the nearest bushes, and writhed
+forward with amazing speed in the direction indicated
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>
+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&#8217;s,
+speaking quietly and confidentially. Mawg, then, had
+gone over to the Bow-legs! Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s own nose wrinkled in disgust as
+the sour taint of them breathed up to him.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m that the
+renegade Mawg, who towered among them arrogantly,
+had been teaching them what he knew of effective
+weapons.</p>
+<p>Having no remotest comprehension of the language
+of the Bow-legs&ndash;&ndash;which Mawg was speaking with
+them&ndash;&ndash;Gr&ocirc;m could get little clue to the drift of their
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+talk. They gesticulated frequently toward the east,
+and then again toward the caves at the valley-mouth,
+so Gr&ocirc;m guessed readily enough that they were planning
+something against his people.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Besides their customary weapons, both Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+burst of flame which no beast ever dared to face,
+and which never failed to compel the awe and wonder
+of his followers.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>But the strangers had vanished. An examination
+of their footprints showed that they had fled in haste;
+and to Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;easily detected
+by his finer footprints&ndash;&ndash;had scaled the ledge and
+come upon the place where Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>The Chief ordered instant pursuit. To this Gr&ocirc;m
+demurred, not only because the fugitives had obtained
+such a start&ndash;&ndash;as was shown by the state of the trail&ndash;&ndash;but
+because he dreaded to leave the Caves so long unguarded.
+He foresaw the possibility of another band
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>
+of invaders surprising the Caves during the absence
+of this most efficient fighting force. But the Chief
+overruled him.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Waving their followers into concealment on either
+side of the trail, the Chief and Gr&ocirc;m stole forward
+and peered cautiously around the turn.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The fool!&#8221; said Bawr. &#8220;He doesn&#8217;t know how to
+fight a leopard.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s hurt. His leg is broken!&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m. 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.</p>
+<p>The Chief looked puzzled for a moment, wondering
+why the deliberate Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m.</p>
+<p>One of the leopards had already succeeded in closing
+in upon the wounded Bow-leg; but at the sight of Gr&ocirc;m
+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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m waved them
+back sternly. They growled with indignation, and
+one, sufficiently prominent in the tribal counsels to dare
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s displeasure, protested hotly against this favor
+to so venomous a foe.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I demand this fellow, Bawr, as my captive!&#8221; said
+Gr&ocirc;m.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was you who took him,&#8221; answered the Chief.
+&#8220;He is yours.&#8221; He was about to add, &#8220;though I can&#8217;t
+see what you want of him&#8221;; 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s capture. Then Gr&ocirc;m stepped
+close beside him and said at his ear: &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At this the Chief, being ready of wit, comprehended
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s purpose; and, to the amazement of his followers,
+he looked down upon the hideous prisoner with
+a smile of satisfaction.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well have I called you the Chief&#8217;s Right Hand,&#8221;
+he answered. &#8220;I shall also have to call you the Chief&#8217;s
+Wisdom, for in saving this fellow&#8217;s life you have
+shown more forethought than I.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The captive&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m to explain
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>
+it. The Chief, doubly secure in his dominance by
+reason of Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>But when, after an hour&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s design should fail to come up to his expectations.</p>
+<p>To the presence of the hideous and repulsive stranger
+in her dwelling, A-ya, as was natural, raised warm objection.
+But when Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s wounds and
+of helping Gr&ocirc;m to teach him the simple speech of the
+tribe.</p>
+<p>As for the captive, for some days he was possessed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>
+by a morose anticipation of being brained at any moment&ndash;&ndash;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&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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&ndash;&ndash;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 Gr&ocirc;m&ndash;&ndash;who
+regarded him altogether impersonally as a means
+to an end, a pawn to be played prudently in a game of
+vast import&ndash;&ndash;his attitude was that of the submitted
+slave, his fate lying in the hollow of his master&#8217;s hand.
+Toward the rest of the tribe&ndash;&ndash;who, till their curiosity
+was sated, kept crowding in to stare and jeer and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>
+curse&ndash;&ndash;he displayed the savage fear and hate of a lynx
+at bay.</p>
+<p>But the babe on A-ya&#8217;s arm seemed to him something
+peculiarly precious. It was not only the son of
+Gr&ocirc;m, 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&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>But it soon became equally obvious that nothing
+would induce him to remove himself from the neighborhood
+of A-ya&#8217;s baby. He was like a gigantic watchdog
+squatting at Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s doorway, chained to it by
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span>
+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.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>II</p>
+<p>The captive said his name was Ook-ootsk&ndash;&ndash;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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s protection by giving
+all the information that he possessed. Simple-minded,
+but with much of a child&#8217;s shrewdness, he quickly
+came to regard himself as of some importance when
+both the Chief and Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s
+baby.</p>
+<p>The information which he was able to give was such
+as to cause the Chief and Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>As the dry season was already close upon them,
+Bawr and Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;the
+attack of six score upon as many thousand&ndash;&ndash;that Bawr
+planned his strategy and Gr&ocirc;m wove unheard-of devices.</p>
+<p>Of the two great caves occupied by the tribe one
+was now abandoned, as not lending itself easily to
+defense. To Bawr&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Into this natural fortress the tribe&ndash;&ndash;with an infinite
+deal of grumbling&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span>
+as to form practical ramparts for the innermost line
+of defense.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m distributed lavishly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>While these preparations were being rushed&ndash;&ndash;somewhat
+to the perplexity of the tribe, who could not
+fathom the tactics of stuffing the landscape with rubbish&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s doorway with A-ya&#8217;s baby in his ape-like
+arms grew more and more anxious. As he conveyed
+to Gr&ocirc;m, the longer the delay the greater the
+force which was being gathered for the assault.</p>
+<p>Having no inkling of Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>
+sheer numbers and would trample the small fires out.
+The confidence of the Chief and Gr&ocirc;m, and of A-ya
+as well, in the face of the awful peril which hung over
+them, filled him with amazement.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are they as many,&#8221; asked Gr&ocirc;m, &#8220;as they who came
+against us in the Little Hills?&#8221;</p>
+<p>But the panting men threw up their hands.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As a swarm of locusts to a flock of starlings,&#8221; they
+replied.</p>
+<p>To their astonishment the Chief smiled with grim
+satisfaction at this appalling news.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is well,&#8221; 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 Gr&ocirc;m, marshalling
+the servitors of the fire, stationed them by the
+range of piles, ready to set light to them on the given
+word.</p>
+<p>It was nearly an hour&ndash;&ndash;so swift had been the terror
+of the scouts&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>The advance of the front ranks came to an instant
+halt, and the low muttering rose to a chorus of harsh
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Standing grim, silent, immovable between their fires,
+the Chief and Gr&ocirc;m awaited the dreadful onset. In
+all the tribe not a voice was raised, not a fighter, man
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Then came a long shout from Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>The brutal, gaping faces screeched with pain and
+terror, and the whole front rank, beating frantically
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>For some seconds, under the specific directions of
+the Chief on the right center and of Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>A-ya, no longer needed at the fires, was just about
+to follow Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s heels. With a scream of warning to Gr&ocirc;m
+she rushed back to the cave. But Gr&ocirc;m did not hear
+her. He had been pulled down, struck senseless and
+buried under a writhing heap of foes.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Then search was made for Gr&ocirc;m. At first the Chief
+imagined that he had followed the captors of A-ya, in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m should not die.
+And lifting the hero in his arms he bore him into the
+cave.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>And from that moment Gr&ocirc;m began climbing steadily
+back to life.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_VII_THE_RESCUE_OF_AYA' id='CHAPTER_VII_THE_RESCUE_OF_AYA'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<h3>THE RESCUE OF A-YA</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The clay-colored, ape-like, bow-legged men
+squatted in council.</p>
+<p>It was not long, as time went in the long, slow
+morning of the world&ndash;&ndash;perhaps a half-score thousand
+years or so&ndash;&ndash;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&#8217;s surface.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;except
+for his eyes. These, though small and deep-set,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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&ndash;&ndash;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&ndash;&ndash;except on the chest and forearm&ndash;&ndash;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, <i>was</i> a face&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>
+his heels crouched a girl, obviously of his own race&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, without looking around, Mawg spoke to
+her, in their own tongue, which the Bow-legs could
+not understand. &#8220;Be ready, girl. They are going to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span>
+kill me now. The Black Chief wants you. But I
+kill him and we run. They are all dirt. <i>Come!</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The spring of Mawg was like a leopard&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s throat with clutching hands.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>The Chief, clapping one hairy hand over his
+wounded eye, glared after the fugitive with the other.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>
+her time for vengeance. He was of her own race; and
+it was in her mind, her spirit&ndash;&ndash;though she herself could
+not so analyze the emotion&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Some days&#8217; 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>On the day, now many weeks back, when Gr&ocirc;m
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m sat down in sudden despair. If Mawg, who
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>
+at least was no coward, had fled alone, then surely the
+girl was dead. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;but shrank back, instead, with
+flattened ears, daunted by his fury.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s arms.</p>
+<p>Following up the plain clue of that tremendous
+pursuit, Gr&ocirc;m worked his way deep into the Bow-legs&#8217;
+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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m would resume his shadowy progress.</p>
+<p>Then, about sunrise (for the Bow-legs, like the birds,
+were early risers) of the second day after the discovery
+of Mawg&#8217;s footprints, the patient hunter&#8217;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, Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+ear. The harangue came soon to an end. The Chief
+stood up. The bestial crowd parted&ndash;&ndash;and through the
+opening Gr&ocirc;m saw A-ya, crouched, with her hair over
+her knees, at the Chief&#8217;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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>
+like a whipped dog. Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>There was something going on among the bow-legged
+mob which Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>A-ya affected to misunderstand the Chief&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;as Gr&ocirc;m had taught her&ndash;&ndash;she made her throw.
+The white fungus was split in halves.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>At this amazing apparition, the mob paused irresolute;
+but the Black Chief came on like a mad buffalo.
+Gr&ocirc;m hurled one of his two spears. He hurled it
+with a loathing fury; but he was compelled to throw
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>
+high, to clear A-ya&#8217;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
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>All the Folk of the Caves could swim like otters,
+and both Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;ragged clubs and
+fragments of broken branches&ndash;&ndash;were falling short; and
+they looked back derisively.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span></p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;the Chief, by
+reason of his superior stature and length of leg, rapidly
+opening up his lead.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s nothing but a pond,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m, in disgust,
+&#8220;and they&#8217;re coming round the shore to head us off.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Gr&ocirc;m 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: &#8220;They&#8217;re biting me all
+over.&#8221; A dozen stinging punctures distributed themselves
+all at once over Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s body. Then he understood
+that their assailants were not water-snakes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quick! To shore!&#8221; he ordered. Throwing all
+their strength into a breath-sapping, over-hand roll,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>
+they shot forward, gained the weedy shallows, and
+scrambled ashore. Their bodies were hung thickly with
+gigantic leeches.</p>
+<p>Heedless of the wounds and the drench of blood,
+they tore off their loathsome assailants. Then, after
+a few seconds&#8217; 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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m. Waving
+A-ya behind him, Gr&ocirc;m strode forward, accepting the
+challenge.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span></p>
+<p>To Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Silent and motionless, poised lightly and gathered as
+if for a spring, Gr&ocirc;m 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, Gr&ocirc;m, still voiceless and noiseless, was upon
+him.</p>
+<p>Had the vicious swing of Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s back. But the latter,
+feeling himself over-balanced by his own ineffective
+violence, leapt far out of reach before turning to see
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s throats&ndash;&ndash;Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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&#8217;s
+head. Before he could recover himself, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s neck, and began working his way in toward
+the artery.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span></p>
+<p>At this moment A-ya glanced about her. She saw
+two bodies of the Bow-legs closing in upon them from
+either side&ndash;&ndash;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&#8217;s throat, and left it there.
+With a hideous cough his grip relaxed. His limbs
+straightened out stiffly, and he lay quivering.</p>
+<p>Covered with blood, Gr&ocirc;m sprang to his feet, and
+turned angrily upon A-ya. &#8220;<i>I</i> would have killed him,&#8221;
+he said, coldly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There was no time,&#8221; answered the girl, and pointed
+to the advancing hordes.</p>
+<p>Without a word Gr&ocirc;m snatched up his club,
+wrenched the broken spear from his dead rival&#8217;s neck,
+thrust it into the girl&#8217;s hands, and darted for the
+narrowing space of open between the two converging
+mobs.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>
+shrubs some twenty feet high, with scanty, pale-green
+leaves almost hidden by their exuberance of blossom.
+But jungle though it was, Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;it seemed to
+Gr&ocirc;m a yell of exultation&ndash;&ndash;but they halted abruptly at
+the edge of the rosy barrier and made no attempt to
+follow.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They know they can&#8217;t catch us,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m,
+slackening his pace. But the girl, puzzled by this
+sudden stopping of the pursuit, felt uneasy and made
+no reply.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+mind. He stopped and clutched the girl by the wrist.
+&#8220;It is poison here. It is death,&#8221; he muttered. &#8220;That&#8217;s
+why they shouted.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, everything is dead but the red flowers,&#8221;
+whispered A-ya, and clung to him, shuddering with
+awe.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Courage!&#8221; cried Gr&ocirc;m, lifting his head and dashing
+his great hand across his eyes. &#8220;We <i>must</i> get
+through. We <i>must</i> find air.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s steps began to lag, as if she were growing sleepy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wake up!&#8221; shouted Gr&ocirc;m, 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.
+&#8220;This way!&#8221; panted Gr&ocirc;m, the sweat pouring down
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Then, after perhaps an hour, Gr&ocirc;m 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,
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span></p>
+<p>For the next few days their journey was without
+adventure, save for the frequent eluding of the
+monsters of that teeming world. Gr&ocirc;m 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 a&euml;rial 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>On a certain day, after a long unbroken stretch of
+travel, A-ya rested and kept watch in a tree-top, while
+Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s trail, and not more than a couple of hundred
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>If Mawg was hunting Gr&ocirc;m, he was at the same
+time himself being hunted. And by a dreadful hunter.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>The crawling figure of Mawg was still a good
+hundred paces from the unsuspecting Gr&ocirc;m, when the
+great bird overtook it. A-ya, watching from her tree-top,
+clutched a branch and held her breath. Mawg&#8217;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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span>
+he was beaten down again, with a smash of that pile-driving
+beak. The bird planted one huge foot on its
+victim&#8217;s loins, gripped his head in its beak, and neatly
+snapped his neck. Then it fell greedily to its hideous
+meal.</p>
+<p>At Mawg&#8217;s scream of terror, Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s voice from the
+tree-top, calling him. &#8220;Come away!&#8221; she cried. &#8220;It
+was Mawg.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_VIII_THE_BENDING_OF_THE_BOW' id='CHAPTER_VIII_THE_BENDING_OF_THE_BOW'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<h3>THE BENDING OF THE BOW</h3>
+</div>
+<p>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&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m, his
+Right Hand and Councilor, the future of the tribe
+looked secure.</p>
+<p>So sharp had been the lessons lately administered
+to the prowling beasts&ndash;&ndash;the terrible saber-tooth, the
+giant red bear of the caves, the proud black lion, and
+the bone-crushing cave hyena&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>It was now two years since the rescue of A-ya from
+her captivity among the Bow-legs. Her child by Gr&ocirc;m
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>At last the lithe lash, so enthusiastically wielded,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Interested, but with no hint of comprehension in
+her bright eyes, she looked upon the first bow&ndash;&ndash;the
+stupendous product of a child and a woman playing.</p>
+<p>The child, displeased at this new, useless thing, and
+wanting his whip back, tried to snatch the bow from
+his mother&#8217;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. &#8220;Go get another stick,&#8221; she commanded
+impatiently; but quite forgot to see her command
+obeyed.</p>
+<p>As she was twanging the strange implement which
+had so happily fashioned itself under her hands, Gr&ocirc;m
+came up behind her. He stepped carefully over the
+sprawling brown baby. He was about to pull her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span>
+heavy hair affectionately; but his eyes fell upon the
+thing in her hands, and he checked himself.</p>
+<p>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. &#8220;Give it to me,&#8221; said he suddenly, laying hold
+of A-ya&#8217;s wrist.</p>
+<p>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,
+Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s eyes; but her
+faith was great. She shook the wild mane of hair
+back from her face, silenced the boy&#8217;s importunings
+with an imperative gesture, and gathered herself with
+her arms about both knees to watch what Gr&ocirc;m would
+do with the plaything.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I did,&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, <i>I</i> did!&#8221; piped the boy, with an injured air.</p>
+<p>The mother laughed indulgently. &#8220;Yes, he tied one
+end, and beat me with it,&#8221; said she. &#8220;Then I took
+it from him, and bent the stick and tied the other end.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is very good!&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m, nodding his approval
+musingly. He squatted down a few feet away, and
+began experimenting.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Oh!</i>&#8221; 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, Gr&ocirc;m got
+up, moved a few paces farther away, and sat down
+again with his back to the family circle.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>
+left fist grasping its middle&ndash;&ndash;to the level of his
+eyes, at arm&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;and caught him fair on the thumb-knuckle.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span></p>
+<p>Arriving at the cane-thicket, Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s little finger.</p>
+<p>These seemed to suggest to him the possibility of
+better results than anything he could get from those
+erratic pebbles.</p>
+<p>By this time quite a number of curious spectators&ndash;&ndash;women
+and children mostly, the majority of the
+men being away hunting, and the rest too proud to
+show their curiosity&ndash;&ndash;had gathered to watch Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span>
+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. Gr&ocirc;m felt that this was progress.
+The spectators opened their mouths in wonder, but
+durst not venture any comment when Gr&ocirc;m was at his
+mysteries.</p>
+<p>Plucking the shaft from the earth, Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s achievement.</p>
+<p>Now, though Gr&ocirc;m 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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span>
+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.
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>An outburst of startled cries arose from all the
+spectators, but it hushed itself almost in the same
+breath. It was Gr&ocirc;m who had done this singular
+thing, smiting unawares from very far off. The old
+woman must have done something to make Gr&ocirc;m
+angry. They were all afraid; and several, whose
+consciences were not quite at ease, followed the old
+woman&#8217;s example and slipped into the Caves.</p>
+<p>As for Gr&ocirc;m, 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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>An hour or two later, Gr&ocirc;m set out from the Caves
+alone in spite of A-ya&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>This basket was a device of A-ya&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m had adopted
+it at once, throwing away his uncertain and always
+troublesome fire-tubes of hollow bamboo.</p>
+<p>Mounting the steep hillside behind the Caves, Gr&ocirc;m
+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
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Absorbed in meditations upon his new weapons,
+Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s couch. Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+straight through the fire, struck Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Uninjured save for an ugly scratch, which bled
+profusely, down one side of his face, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m to restring it many
+times before all the stretch was out of it.</p>
+<p>Having satisfied himself as to the power of his bow
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>
+and the range of his arrows, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>That night Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>This matter settled in his mind, Gr&ocirc;m burned to
+put his wonderful new weapon to practical test. He
+descended cautiously the steep slope from the eastern
+edge of his plateau&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>
+with horns like scimitars each as long as Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s arm.
+His flanks were scarred with long wounds but lately
+healed, and Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>The beast offered an admirable target. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+arrow sped noiselessly between the curtaining branches,
+and found its mark high on the bull&#8217;s fore-shoulder.
+It penetrated&ndash;&ndash;but not to a depth of more than two
+or three inches. And Gr&ocirc;m, though elated by his
+good shot, realized that such a wound would be nothing
+more than an irritant.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m heard
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span>
+him crashing onward down the slope, and smiled to
+think of the surprise in store for any antagonist that
+might cross the mad brute&#8217;s path.</p>
+<p>This experiment upon the wild bull had shown Gr&ocirc;m
+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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s head. They were as straight and
+slim as the canes. And their hardness was proved
+to Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;this
+time down the ravine&ndash;&ndash;to seek a living target
+for his practice.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>For nearly an hour he waited, moveless, save for
+his ranging eyes, as the rock on which he leaned. To
+a hunter like Gr&ocirc;m, 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span>
+dapple hide, but a young cow-buffalo. Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>To Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m and Bawr there was the fullest
+understanding, and Gr&ocirc;m would have whistled that
+plover-cry, his private signal, but for the risk of interfering
+with Bawr&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>But Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span>
+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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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.
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s second shaft had flown true; and Bawr, greatly
+marveling, drew up his legs to a place of safety.</p>
+<p>With the fire of that deep wound in its entrails the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span>
+saber-tooth forgot all about its quarry in the tree.
+It had caught sight of Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m, 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s,
+it struggled to draw itself up all the way&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m dropped his bow beside him and reached for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Bawr, meanwhile, seeing Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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. Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>With fine self-restraint Bawr refrained from striking,
+that he might seem to usurp no share in Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+amazing achievement. He stood leaning upon his
+spear, calmly watching the last feeble paroxysm, till
+Gr&ocirc;m came scrambling down from the ledge and stood
+beside him. He took the bow and arrows, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span>
+examined them in silence. Then he turned upon
+Gr&ocirc;m with burning eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m laughed and shook his head. &#8220;Bawr is the
+better man of us two,&#8221; said he positively, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_IX_THE_DESTROYING_SPLENDOR' id='CHAPTER_IX_THE_DESTROYING_SPLENDOR'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<h3>THE DESTROYING SPLENDOR</h3>
+</div>
+<p style='text-align:center;'>I</p>
+<p>To Gr&ocirc;m, 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Having satisfied himself (the country being fairly
+open) that the woman&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;an effective method of guarding
+his more highly developed breed from the mixture of
+an inferior blood. But Gr&ocirc;m, the Chief and the wise
+man, had many vague impulses moving him at times
+which were novel to the human play-fellows of Earth&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Knowing a few words of the Bow-legs&#8217; 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s face, though
+uncomely, was more intelligent and human than the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span>
+bestial faces of the Bow-legs&#8217; 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&#8217;s reassurance. She poured a stream of chatter
+quite unlike the clicks and barkings of the Bow-legs.
+Then she crept closer to Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>As Gr&ocirc;m stood studying the pair, the mother kept
+throwing glances of horror over her shoulder, as if
+expecting her assailants to arrive at any moment.
+Gr&ocirc;m followed her eyes, but there was no sign of any
+pursuit. Then he observed the fugitives&#8217; 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&ndash;&ndash;the Thing with so strange a mouth,
+and so strange a way of using it&ndash;&ndash;had apparently
+given up the pursuit. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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&#8217; tongue. He stooped over her, and roughly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>With a qualm of compunction, which rather puzzled
+him, Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s young brother, M&ocirc;, Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s favorite follower
+and hunting mate; and he had come at speed, being
+very swift of foot, in answer to Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s signal.
+Breathing quickly, he stood at Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s side, and looked
+down with wonder and dislike upon the crouching
+woman.</p>
+<p>Briefly Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But now,&#8221; said he, &#8220;we will go and see what it is
+that has bitten the woman. It is surely something with
+a strange mouth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>M&ocirc;, who was not only brave to recklessness, but who
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+would have followed Gr&ocirc;m through the mouth of hell,
+sprang forward eagerly. Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>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
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>This frantic pantomime Gr&ocirc;m could read in no other
+way than as an attempt to tell him that the unknown
+Something had killed five of the woman&#8217;s companions.
+The information gave him pause. Adventurous as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span>
+he was, he had small respect for mere pig-headed recklessness.
+He was resolved to solve the problem&ndash;&ndash;but
+after all it could abide his more thorough preparation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come back,&#8221; he ordered, turning to the impetuous
+M&ocirc;. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>II</p>
+<p>On their return to the Caves, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m had
+done. The girl A-ya, however, in a moment of
+peculiar insight had gathered, or thought she gathered,
+from the stranger&#8217;s signs, that the dreadful and destroying
+Thing was something that flew&ndash;&ndash;therefore,
+a great flesh-eating bird. But she gathered, also, that
+it was something which in some way bore a resemblance
+to fire&ndash;&ndash;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span>
+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&#8217;s attention to the fact&ndash;&ndash;a point
+upon which Gr&ocirc;m was equally reserved.</p>
+<p>With so provocative a mystery waiting to be solved,
+Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m
+on the expedition. Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>It was a very little party which started southward
+from the Caves&ndash;&ndash;simply Gr&ocirc;m, A-ya, young M&ocirc;, and
+a dwarfish kinsman of Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;except
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m. 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.</p>
+<p>The little expedition traveled Indian file, Gr&ocirc;m leading
+the way, with A-ya at his heels, then Loob the
+Scout, and young M&ocirc; 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 Gr&ocirc;m, whose
+restless brain never suffered him to sleep by day, kept
+watch, and pondered the adventure which lay before
+them.</p>
+<p>As Gr&ocirc;m sat there, ten or a dozen paces from the
+fire, absorbed in thought, his eyes gradually focussed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>
+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. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s first impulse was to wake the sleepers with
+a yell and shepherd them to refuge in the tree&ndash;&ndash;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;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.
+Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s
+attention.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span></p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s well-seasoned nerves.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m
+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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>That afternoon toward sundown the expedition
+reached the point where the fugitive had made her
+appeal to Gr&ocirc;m. For fear of giving information to
+the unknown enemy, no fires were lighted. The night
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span>
+was passed in a dense and lofty tree-top. For Gr&ocirc;m,
+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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>But Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s
+venture.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;bloodstained
+and bright&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A bird!&#8221; whispered A-ya, with a gleam of triumph
+in her eyes, at the same time glancing up into the
+tree-tops apprehensively. But Gr&ocirc;m did not think so.
+There were no marks of mighty claws on the turf
+around the skeleton.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m cast about him an eager but anxious eye.
+The country was not densely wooded at this point,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m an added menace, as
+if some peculiar treachery must lurk behind it.</p>
+<p>In the center of an open glade, not far from the
+skeleton, Gr&ocirc;m 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 M&ocirc; 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&ndash;&ndash;now doubled by that of the other fugitive
+whose skeleton lay there in the sun&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>In shape it was exactly like a dragon-fly; but the
+length of its flaming violet body was greater than that
+of Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m shivered
+with the feeling that they had spied him out and were
+peering into his very soul.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;and, indeed, almost as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span>
+swift&ndash;&ndash;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span>
+left; and Gr&ocirc;m drew a long breath as he assured himself
+that their course was taking them far from the
+fires of A-ya and M&ocirc;.</p>
+<p>When Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s forearm, while
+its head was as big as Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s two great fists put
+together. It was this head which held Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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. Gr&ocirc;m found the stare of those blank, pupilless
+eyes almost intolerable.</p>
+<p>It was plainly straight at him, through the ineffectual
+screen of the leafage, that the dreadful insect was staring.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m a sense of disgust, and his shrinking dread
+began to give way to a sort of rage.</p>
+<p>Then he took note of the monster&#8217;s mouth&ndash;&ndash;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&ndash;&ndash;and Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;and the great fly was pinned, through
+the thorax, to the soft, rotten wood of its perch.</p>
+<p>To Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m, who had prudently edged
+in among a tangle of stems. Its fury carried it
+through the screen of leafage&ndash;&ndash;but then, its wings
+impeded by the branches, and the arrow hampering it,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>
+it dashed itself to the earth. Instantly Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m shattered the gleaming head with
+his club. Then he trod the silver wings to dust.</p>
+<p>Having slaked his wrath effectually, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m started to the
+rescue on the full run&ndash;&ndash;taking care, however, to keep
+within cover of the thickets. But before he had gone
+a quarter of a mile he heard A-ya&#8217;s voice calling him,
+wildly, insistently, mingled with excited yells from M&ocirc;.
+He shouted in reply and dashed madly for the fires.
+The peril of A-ya put all other considerations out of
+his mind.</p>
+<p>As he burst forth into the glade of refuge, he
+saw A-ya and young M&ocirc; 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>
+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&#8217;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. Gr&ocirc;m tore them off,
+and slammed the writhing, wingless bodies into the
+fire.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m
+and M&ocirc; 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. Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll have to run for those bushes,&#8221; he said
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span>
+presently. &#8220;They can&#8217;t fly in where the branches are
+thick. It breaks their wings.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good,&#8221; said young M&ocirc;. But A-ya, whose shapely
+shoulders and thighs were already covered with hideous
+wounds, trembled at the prospect.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now is our time. Come!&#8221; commanded Gr&ocirc;m,
+leading the way out of the circle.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s stop and kill them all!&#8221; pleaded young M&ocirc;,
+his eyes red with rage.</p>
+<p>But Gr&ocirc;m pointed to the cloud. &#8220;It will pass
+quickly,&#8221; said he. &#8220;We must be far from here before
+the sun shows his face again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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 M&ocirc; 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m and A-ya, M&ocirc; 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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_X_THE_TERRORS_OF_THE_DARK' id='CHAPTER_X_THE_TERRORS_OF_THE_DARK'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<h3>THE TERRORS OF THE DARK</h3>
+</div>
+<p style='text-align:center;'>I</p>
+<p>From the topmost summit of that range of
+pointed hills which held the caves and the cave-mouth
+fires of his people, Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;grotesque and enormous growths
+knitted together impenetrably by a tangle of gigantic,
+flame-flowered lianas. And in those rank, green
+glooms, as Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m
+was thirsting to explore. They might contain caves
+more roomy than those of his own hills&ndash;&ndash;spacious and
+suitable to give shelter to his tribe, which was now finding
+itself somewhat cramped. Moreover, it had always
+seemed to Gr&ocirc;m that there might be a mystery behind
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span>
+those hills, and to his restless imagination a mystery
+was always like a stinging goad.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>But now there was not room enough, and Bawr,
+the wise Chief, had taken frequent counsel upon the
+matter with Gr&ocirc;m, whom, loving him greatly he called
+sometimes his Right Hand and sometimes the Eye
+of the People. At last, it had been settled that Gr&ocirc;m
+should lead a party through the jungle land to those
+other hills, to spy out the prospect. And Gr&ocirc;m, 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+below him, before plunging into its mysterious
+depths.</p>
+<p>As was his custom when on a perilous venture,
+Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;and perhaps fallen a
+prey to prowling beasts. He took also A-ya&#8217;s young
+brother, the hot-head M&ocirc;; 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.</p>
+<p>This little but greatly daring band, which Gr&ocirc;m,
+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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s wonderful invention&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>The forest into whose depths Gr&ocirc;m 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 a&euml;rial, 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.</p>
+<p>To men of to-day this jungle would have been impenetrable,
+except by the incessant use of axe or
+machete. But Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span>
+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 a&euml;rial 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.</p>
+<p>Yet before the end of that first day&#8217;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m, glancing at A-ya, muttered quietly:
+&#8220;It is better to be up here than down there.&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m itched to shoot an arrow into one of those
+unwinking, devilish eyes. But arrows were too
+precious to be wasted.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>On the morrow, however, as they were pursuing
+their a&euml;rial 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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 M&ocirc;, his fiery
+temper stung by their challenge, clapped an arrow to
+his string and raised his bow to shoot. But Gr&ocirc;m
+checked him sternly, dreading to fix any thirst of vengeance
+in the minds of the terrible troop.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They can&#8217;t come at us here. Let them forget about
+us,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Don&#8217;t take any more notice of them at
+all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m
+kept on straight to the north, by the route which he had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>
+planned. And the mad gibbering died away into the
+hot, green silence of the tree-tops.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>And now the hills looked different. Between the
+nearest&ndash;&ndash;a long, rolling, treeless ridge of downland&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span>
+the water washed the steep-shouldered promontory,
+that Gr&ocirc;m decided to shape his course across the
+plain.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Down to earth,&#8221; ordered Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m, 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>For just one second Gr&ocirc;m thought his hour had
+come. He crouched to steady himself, then darted forward
+and hurled his club straight at his foe&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+Gr&ocirc;m swung himself to the ground. As he reached
+it both M&ocirc; 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There must be something out here that they fear
+greatly,&#8221; commented Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>II</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m gave a wide berth. He
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Turning to the right, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m regarded with such
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span>
+suspicion. Before they had gone many hundred yards
+his suspicion was more than justified.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>For a moment or two Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s party had paused,
+confident in their own fleetness of foot, and wondering
+at that pair of amazing horns on the monster&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>As he neared the swift promontory which terminated
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>
+with the range of downs, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m decided to push forward.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Disguising his growing uneasiness that he might
+not discourage his followers&ndash;&ndash;who were now
+full of elation at having reached the foot of the hills&ndash;&ndash;he
+led on again in haste, though there seemed to be
+no need of haste. Both Hobbo and young M&ocirc;, indeed,
+were for staying a while and sleeping in the shade
+of an overhanging rock. But A-ya, who sensed
+through sympathy her lord&#8217;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
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s decision.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>
+up, and was lashed to foam by the strokes of a gigantic
+tail.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Run!&#8221; yelled Gr&ocirc;m; and they all dashed forward,
+there being no chance to go back. In the same instant,
+an appalling head&ndash;&ndash;like that of a thrice magnified and
+distorted crocodile, with vast, round, painted eyes&ndash;&ndash;was
+upthrust from the water and came rushing after
+them at a pace which sent up a curving wave before
+it.</p>
+<p>Quick as thought, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+Gr&ocirc;m there went up a shriek so piercing that in their
+own ears it disguised the stupendous rending roar
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>To Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>For a second or two, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span>
+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:</p>
+<p>&#8220;A-ya! where are you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Gr&ocirc;m!</i>&#8221; came the girl&#8217;s answer, a sobbing cry of
+relief and joy, from almost, as it seemed, beneath his
+outstretched hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We are all here,&#8221; came the voices of the three men.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s side,
+clutching her to him to stop her trembling.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are we to do now?&#8221; asked the girl, after a
+long silence. Without Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We must find a way out,&#8221; answered Gr&ocirc;m, with
+resolute confidence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If Hobbo had not dropped the fire!&#8221; said young
+M&ocirc; bitterly.</p>
+<p>The giant groaned in self-abasement, and beat his
+chest with his great fists. But Gr&ocirc;m, who would allow
+no dissensions in his following, answered sternly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Be silent. You might have done no better yourself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then for a time there was no more said, while
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>
+Gr&ocirc;m, sitting there in the dark with the girl&#8217;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&#8217;s equipment&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come on!&#8221; 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&#8217;s length to the right, more or less, he got
+always a splash of water.</p>
+<p>With their fine senses intensely alert, they were able
+to make fair progress, even though unaided by their
+eyes. But Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span>
+shaggy hair uplifted on his neck. &#8220;Back!&#8221; he hissed,
+thrusting A-ya off to arm&#8217;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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Every one drew a long breath. Then, after a few
+moments, A-ya laughed softly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s good to find something at last that runs away
+from us instead of after us!&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+exploring spear assured them that it was deep water.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We must swim,&#8221; said he. &#8220;Leave your clubs behind.&#8221;
+And leading the way down into the unknown
+tide, he struck out straight ahead.</p>
+<p>It was nerve-testing work swimming thus through
+that unseen water to an unguessed goal; but Gr&ocirc;m
+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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Suddenly there appeared ahead of them a faint,
+bluish gleam upon the water&#8217;s surface. It was something
+elusive and unreal, and vaguely menacing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Daylight!&#8221; exclaimed young M&ocirc; eagerly. But
+Gr&ocirc;m said nothing. He did not think it was daylight,
+and he was apprehensive of some new peril.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Toward this ledge Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>Nervously they all glanced down, and a low cry
+of horror broke from their lips. The depths were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>
+swarming with monstrous, luminous forms, a moon-bright,
+crawling, sliding field of claws and feelers, and
+broad, flat backs, and dreadful, protruding eyes.</p>
+<p>The eyes all stared straight up at them with a fixed
+malignancy that froze even Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s blood. They
+seemed innumerable, and all together they came
+suddenly floating upwards.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Beside himself with rage and horror, Gr&ocirc;m stabbed
+down wildly into the whirling struggle, and his example
+was followed at once by Loob and young M&ocirc;. 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.</p>
+<p>But A-ya, who had taken no part in this vengeance,
+now snatched Gr&ocirc;m by the arm, shrieking wildly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Look! They are coming out!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Recovering their senses, the three half-maddened
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span>
+men stared about them. On every side the gigantic
+crabs&ndash;&ndash;some with claws eight or ten feet long, and
+eyes upon the ends of long waving stalks&ndash;&ndash;were crawling
+up upon the ledge.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Every eye but Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s was glued in fascination to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span>
+the baleful scene. But Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come! While the light lasts,&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is a pleasant land,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m, &#8220;and we will
+surely come back to it. But I think we must find another
+way than that by which we came.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XI_THE_FEASTING_OF_THE_CAVE_FOLK' id='CHAPTER_XI_THE_FEASTING_OF_THE_CAVE_FOLK'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<h3>THE FEASTING OF THE CAVE FOLK</h3>
+</div>
+<p style='text-align:center;'>I</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;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,&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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&ndash;&ndash;great
+luscious mussels and peculiarly plump and savory
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s giant slave, the lame Bow-leg, Ook-ootsk,
+to guard the little children and the tribal fires. As
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s mate, and his confidential associate in all his
+greatest ventures, A-ya&#8217;s prestige in the tribe had come
+to be only less than that of Bawr and Gr&ocirc;m themselves.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;of which one was twisted so
+that the toes pointed almost backwards&ndash;&ndash;lay sprawling
+and chuckling benevolently near the entrance, while a
+swarm of little ones, A-ya&#8217;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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span></p>
+<p>But peace, in the days when earth was young, was
+something more precarious than a bubble.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>A-ya fetched a deep breath of relief when she saw
+that this was no ravening monster. Her immediate
+thought was the hunter&#8217;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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>
+Blood burst from the animal&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you suppose was chasing it, Ook-ootsk?&#8221;
+she queried; and whipped about, without waiting for
+his answer, to stare anxiously at the green shoulder
+of the hillside.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Black lion, maybe,&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s peculiar terror.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hide the children!&#8221; 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&ndash;&ndash;a wound which, though likely to prove mortal
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>
+the light from his eyes. He made for her voice
+straight enough; but it chanced that exactly in his
+path lay the second fire&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The group scattered in all directions. But one brave
+old gray-beard, who had marked A-ya&#8217;s success,
+lingered in the path, and tried to thrust his blazing
+faggot into the monster&#8217;s eyes, as she had done. He
+was not quick enough. The monster threw up its
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span>
+muzzle, dodging the stroke, and the next moment it
+had struck down its feeble adversary and crushed his
+head between its tremendous jaws.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The old men, jabbering in triumph, craned their
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span>
+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.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>II</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m
+when he should return. She had the right to them,
+not only because she was the mate of Gr&ocirc;m, but because
+the kill was hers.</p>
+<p>As she stood over the carcase&ndash;&ndash;the fore-part of
+which had been superficially barbecued in the fire&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>Now it chanced that the elk&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take it back and throw it on the fire again!&#8221; she
+ordered angrily. The generous lump of steak, which
+she had hacked off for herself from the loin, had proved
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Noting the supreme success of A-ya&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>
+happy smiles, and she felt dimly that anything like
+discipline would be unpopular at such a moment.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>When the anxious warriors arrived before the cave,
+they were amazed at the hilarity which they found
+there&ndash;&ndash;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?</p>
+<p>The younger women, coming up behind the warriors,
+were derisive. They were always critical in their attitude
+towards A-ya&ndash;&ndash;so far as they dared to be&ndash;&ndash;and
+now they ran forward to scold and slap their respective
+children for putting this disgusting burnt meat
+into their mouths.</p>
+<p>To Gr&ocirc;m and Bawr, however, A-ya explained the
+whole situation in a few pertinent phrases, and followed
+up her explanation by proffering them each a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span>
+well-cooked morsel. They both smelled it doubtfully,
+tasted it, broke into smiles, and devoured it, smacking
+their bearded lips.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did <i>you</i> do this, girl?&#8221; demanded Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;and that of Gr&ocirc;m, who was
+now following his example&ndash;&ndash;cured the rest of the
+warriors of their hesitation, so effectually that in five
+minutes there was nothing more left of the great elk&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m, smiled with comprehending
+sarcasm at their conversion.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XII_ON_THE_FACE_OF_THE_WATERS' id='CHAPTER_XII_ON_THE_FACE_OF_THE_WATERS'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<h3>ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS</h3>
+</div>
+<p style='text-align:center;'>I</p>
+<p>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&#8217; journey of
+the Caves there was nothing to be found that would
+quite take the place of those hickory sprouts. Neither
+Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m was convinced that it must
+be sought for far afield. Life had been running uneventfully
+for months at the Great Caves, and Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s
+restless spirit was craving new knowledge, new adventure.</p>
+<p>On this quest of the arrow Gr&ocirc;m took with him only
+two companions&ndash;&ndash;his slim, swift-footed mate, A-ya
+and that cunning little scout, Loob, the Hairy One.</p>
+<p>For the space of three days they journeyed due west
+from the Caves. Then the range of downland which
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>
+they had been following swept off sharply to the south.</p>
+<p>Being bent upon exploring to the westward&ndash;&ndash;though
+he was not very clear as to his reasons for his preference&ndash;&ndash;Gr&ocirc;m
+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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The great river barred their way, flowing as it did
+toward the north-east, and Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m
+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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;which
+looked to him much more beautiful and more
+interesting than that on which he stood&ndash;&ndash;and wondered
+if he should ever be able to devise some way of
+reaching it other than by swimming.</p>
+<p>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 d&eacute;tour 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.</p>
+<p>In all this time, and through all difficulties and
+dangers, neither Gr&ocirc;m nor A-ya, nor the unsleeping
+Loob had lost sight of the object of their journey.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>In the customary order of their going, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>It chanced that A-ya dropped back some paces
+further, without saying anything to Gr&ocirc;m. 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;the great, red, stinging ants whose
+venom is like drops of liquid flame.</p>
+<p>At the sound of her scream, Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Loob came to help, but Gr&ocirc;m, his brain keen in
+every emergency, stopped him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Keep off!&#8221; he ordered. &#8220;Keep off! and keep
+watch!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then he seized A-ya by one arm, rushed her to the
+edge of the bank, and dragged her with him into the
+water.</p>
+<p>At this point the water was not much more than
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;s ready spear
+was thrust clean through its throat, and his yell of
+warning tore the air. Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217;s spear with it, gripped tight in
+the constriction of its throat muscles.</p>
+<p>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&#8217;s
+tail wrapped crushingly about its jaws; but the python,
+with Loob&#8217;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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You got us out of that just in time,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m,
+grinning upon the little scout with approval.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hate ants,&#8221; she said, shuddering. &#8220;Let&#8217;s get
+away from here.&#8221;</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>II</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;and that the unexpected was almost always
+perilous.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m had ever seen, he gave the impression
+of combining the terrific power of the
+rhinoceros with the agile speed and devilish cunning of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t go in <i>these</i> trees!&#8221; said Loob, whose piercing
+eyes had investigated them minutely at the first glimpse
+of the monsters in the grass.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why not?&#8221; demanded Gr&ocirc;m, his eyes still fixed
+upon the monsters.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh! The bees! The terrible bees!&#8221; whispered
+A-ya. &#8220;Where can we go?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span>
+globes. They looked harmless enough, but
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, we must trust to our running&ndash;&ndash;and they are
+very swift,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m. &#8220;But let us go softly now,
+and perhaps they will not charge upon us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>The three were among the swiftest runners of the
+tribe; but Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>About a mile further on the woods came to an
+end, and Gr&ocirc;m, 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&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>At last a curve of the bank showed them the woods
+sweeping down again to the water, but three or four
+miles ahead! Gr&ocirc;m, 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&#8217;s face showed signs of distress, and at this
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s heart sank. He began to scan the water,
+weighing the chances of the crocodiles. It looked as
+if they were trapped beyond escape.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m headed with new hope. It
+might be strong enough&ndash;&ndash;parts of it at least&ndash;&ndash;to bear
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span>
+up the three fugitives. But their furious pursuers
+would surely not venture their giant bulks upon it.</p>
+<p>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 d&eacute;bris, 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.</p>
+<p>The raging brutes were not more than a dozen paces
+behind, when Gr&ocirc;m 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 d&eacute;bris, 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ll never dare to try to follow us here,&#8221; gasped
+A-ya.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span>
+inner edge of the mass gave way at once beneath them&ndash;&ndash;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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&#8217; heads with his light club.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;which indeed was
+no battle at all&ndash;&ndash;soon was over. The eddy had become
+but a writhing nest of crocodiles.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was hardly worth while wasting arrows, you
+see?&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m, standing erect on the raft and watching
+the scene with brooding interest.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you suppose those swimming beasts with the
+great jaws can get at us here?&#8221; demanded A-ya with
+a shudder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;While this thing that carries us holds together,
+I think we can fight them off,&#8221; replied Gr&ocirc;m. 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.</p>
+<p>When all was done that could be done, the voyagers
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m
+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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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&ndash;&ndash;upborne, dry and without
+discomfort, upon its surface.</p>
+<p>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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Just as he was beginning to grapple with this
+problem, A-ya anticipated his thought&ndash;&ndash;as he had
+noticed that she often did. Looking up at him through
+her tossed hair, she enquired where they were going.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am just trying to think,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;how to
+make this thing take us where we want to go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If the water is not too deep, couldn&#8217;t you push
+with your long spear?&#8221; suggested the girl.</p>
+<p>Acting at once on the suggestion, Gr&ocirc;m leaned over
+the edge and thrust the spear straight downwards.
+But he could find no bottom.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is too deep,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but I&#8217;ll find a way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span>
+doubt about it. He had found a way of influencing
+their direction.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am going to take you over to the other shore,&#8221;
+he announced proudly.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;more or less&ndash;&ndash;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have found it!&#8221; he exclaimed in exultation. &#8220;On
+this thing we can travel over the water where we will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But not against the current,&#8221; objected A-ya, whose
+enthusiasm was a little damped by the fact that she did
+not like the look of that further shore.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That will come in time,&#8221; declared Gr&ocirc;m confidently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Here&#8217;s something coming now,&#8221; announced Loob,
+springing to his feet and grabbing his bow. At the
+same moment the flat, villainous head of a big crocodile
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span>
+shot up over the edge of the raft, and its owner, with
+enormous jaws half open, started to scramble aboard.</p>
+<p>A-ya&#8217;s bow was bent as swiftly as Loob&#8217;s, and the
+two arrows sped together, both into the monster&#8217;s
+gaping gullet. Amazed at this reception it shut its jaws
+with a loud snap, halted and came on again. Then a
+stab of Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>By this time they were getting nearer the other shore.
+But on close view, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, we don&#8217;t want to go ashore there!&#8221; 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, we don&#8217;t,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+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 d&eacute;bris 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&#8217;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&#8217;s eyes with a smile. His eager desire now was
+to get back home and put his new scheme into execution.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where are we going now?&#8221; asked A-ya.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m looked about him wildly&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This river,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>
+going home. We will come again to look for arrows
+in a new raft which I will make.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he spoke, Loob&#8217;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&#8217;s feet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish we had fire with us, to cook it with,&#8221; said
+she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;On the new raft, as I will make it,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m,
+&#8220;that may very well be. Our journey will be safe and
+easy, and the good fire we will have always with us.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIII_THE_FEAR' id='CHAPTER_XIII_THE_FEAR'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<h3>THE FEAR</h3>
+</div>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;and this seemed
+to the Tribe the most portentous sign of all&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span>
+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.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Bawr, the Chief, and Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>Further out in the plain pastured a herd of gigantic
+creatures such as neither Bawr nor Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;mighty enough
+to carry a bison cradled in their curve&ndash;&ndash;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&#8217;s food.</p>
+<p>It was the Cave Man&#8217;s first view of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>
+Mammoth&ndash;&ndash;which had not yet developed the shaggy coat it
+was later to grow on the cold sub-Artic plains.</p>
+<p>Recovering at length from his amazement, Bawr
+remarked:</p>
+<p>&#8220;They seem to have two tails, those new beasts&ndash;&ndash;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?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m thought long before replying.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said he, &#8220;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!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If they are driven over us,&#8221; muttered Bawr, &#8220;they
+will grind us and our fires into the dust.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It must be men,&#8221; mused Gr&ocirc;m aloud, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Before they come,&#8221; said Bawr, dropping his great
+craggy chin upon his breast, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He lifted his maned and massive head, and shook
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span>
+his great spear defiantly at the unknown doom that was
+coming up from the south. But Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s eyes were
+sunken deep under his brows in brooding thought.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is one way, perhaps,&#8221; he said at length.
+&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The waves, and the monsters of the waves, will
+swallow us up,&#8221; suggested Bawr.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Some of us, perhaps many of us,&#8221; agreed Gr&ocirc;m.
+&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is well,&#8221; grunted Bawr, turning to hurry down
+the steep. &#8220;We will build rafts. Let us hasten.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>On the beach below the Caves the Men of the Tribe
+worked furiously, dragging the trunks of trees together
+at the water&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;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&ndash;&ndash;remained before
+the Caves under the command of A-ya, Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s mate.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>Down by the edge of the tide the raft-builders
+worked under Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s guidance. The broad water&ndash;&ndash;some
+four or five miles across&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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
+Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>But for this most wise provision Fate refused to
+grant the time.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They must not come yet. They&#8217;ll be in the way!&#8221;
+cried Bawr angrily, waving them back. But they paid
+no attention&ndash;&ndash;which showed that there was something
+they feared more even than the iron-fisted Chief.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There are none of the young women or the old
+men, who can fight, among them,&#8221; said Gr&ocirc;m. &#8220;A-ya
+must have sent them, because the time has come. Let
+us wait for the young girl, who seems to bring a
+message.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span></p>
+<p>Breathless, and clutching at her bosom with one
+hand, the girl fell at Bawr&#8217;s feet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A-ya says, &#8216;Come quick!&#8217;&#8221; she gasped. &#8220;They
+are too many. They run over the fires and trample
+us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m sprang forward with a cry, then stopped and
+looked at his Chief.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Go, you,&#8221; said Bawr, &#8220;and bring them to us. I
+will stay here and look to the rafts.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Taking a half-score of the strongest warriors with
+him, Gr&ocirc;m raced up the steep, torn with anxiety for
+the fate of A-ya and the children.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>When Gr&ocirc;m and his eager handful, passing a stream
+of trembling fugitives on the way, reached the level
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;gruntings,
+bellowings, howlings, roarings, bleatings
+and brayings&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;hideously
+but aimlessly, as if the great beast hardly heeded what
+it was doing. There was something peculiarly terrifying
+in the animal&#8217;s preoccupation.</p>
+<p>At the center of the line, immediately before the
+main Cave-mouth&ndash;&ndash;whose yawning entrance seemed
+to be the objective of the swarming beasts&ndash;&ndash;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&ndash;&ndash;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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Go back, all you women!&#8221; yelled Gr&ocirc;m above the
+tumult, as he and his men raced to the barrier. &#8220;Get
+down to the beach with the children. We&#8217;ll hold the
+rush back till you get down. Run! Run!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Sobbing with the fury of the struggle, the women
+obeyed, darting back and pouncing upon their own
+little ones&ndash;&ndash;all but A-ya, who remained doggedly at
+Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s side.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Go,&#8221; ordered Gr&ocirc;m fiercely. &#8220;The children need
+you. Get them all down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m turned to the old
+men.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You go now,&#8221; he ordered.</p>
+<p>But they refused.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We stay here,&#8221; cried one, breathless, but with fire
+in his ancient eyes. &#8220;None too much room on the
+rafts.&#8221; And they fell again grimly to the fight.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You go! You are lame and cannot run.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span></p>
+<p>The crouching giant looked up at him with a widemouthed
+grin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am no woman,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I stay and hold them
+back when you all go. I kill, and kill. And then I
+go very far.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He waved one great gnarled hand, dripping with
+blood, toward the sun and the high spaces of air.</p>
+<p>Before Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Two-Tails are upon us!&#8221; cried Gr&ocirc;m, in a
+voice of awe. And his followers gasped, as the
+colossal shapes shouldered up into full view.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is time for us to go too,&#8221; shouted Gr&ocirc;m, clutching
+the lame slave by the arm to drag him off. But
+Ook-ootsk wrenched himself free.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll hold them back till you get away,&#8221; he growled,
+and drove his great spear into the heart of a bull which
+came over the barrier at that instant. Gr&ocirc;m saw it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Then the Mammoths came thundering and trumpeting
+across the plateau, going through and over the
+lesser beasts like a tidal wave. Gr&ocirc;m, 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 Gr&ocirc;m slipped hurriedly
+over the brink and down the path.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>At the rafts it was bedlam. A score or more of
+the women and children, as they were crossing to the
+water&#8217;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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>As Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hurry! hurry!&#8221; thundered Bawr, straining at the
+stranded timbers till the great veins stood out on neck
+and forehead as if they would burst.</p>
+<p>Under the added efforts of Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>At this moment, along the beach came a new rush
+of animals&ndash;&ndash;chiefly buffalo, headed by three huge white
+rhinoceros. These all seemed quite blind with panic.
+They dashed on straight ahead, paying no heed whatever
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>A howl of rage went up from the rafts; and A-ya,
+whose bow was quick as thought, let fly an arrow
+before Gr&ocirc;m could stay her hand. The shaft struck
+deep in the monster&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m, 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span>
+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?</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span>
+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&ndash;&ndash;upon finding its escape cut off&ndash;&ndash;and
+stand there plucking its foes one by one from the
+shore to trample them under its feet, screaming shrill
+triumph.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIV_THE_LAKE_OF_LONG_SLEEP' id='CHAPTER_XIV_THE_LAKE_OF_LONG_SLEEP'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<h3>THE LAKE OF LONG SLEEP</h3>
+</div>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;as
+precious to the tribe as life itself&ndash;&ndash;which they had
+brought with them in their flight upon the rafts. And
+Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>From the top of a solitary jobo tree, which towered
+above the rank surrounding jungle, Gr&ocirc;m 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>The first few days of the march were like a nightmare.
+Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m 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&ndash;&ndash;herded together
+into a quiet cove, and lashed to the shore by twisted
+vine-ropes against some possible future need.</p>
+<p>At the head of the dismal march went Gr&ocirc;m, 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>
+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 M&ocirc;, 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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m ordered an immediate halt.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>While the rest of the tribe gave itself up to the
+feasting, Gr&ocirc;m 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.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span>
+Quite unawed by the fires they came ashore with a
+clumsy rush, open-mouthed.</p>
+<p>While the clamoring women snatched the children
+away to the other side of the encampment, Gr&ocirc;m 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 Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span>
+seven or eight times the height of Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m 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. Gr&ocirc;m
+shouted again, and this time the warriors hurled their
+spears&ndash;&ndash;and they, too, fell harmless from the monster&#8217;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 Gr&ocirc;m, who alone, of all the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span>
+warriors, had not recoiled in terror, succeeded in driving
+a spear deep into the unarmored inner side of the
+monster&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m concluded that his
+spear-head in its groin and A-ya&#8217;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&ndash;&ndash;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&#8217;s march
+ahead.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;s heart sank. To reach the refuge of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m
+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&ndash;&ndash;good
+swimmers all of them&ndash;&ndash;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&ndash;&ndash;whereat Gr&ocirc;m wondered, as he
+thought they would have been among the first to dare
+the crossing of the river. Had they kept on up the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>
+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?</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m.
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>On the fifth day of the march they saw the jungle
+on their right come to an end. It was succeeded
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span>
+by a vast expanse of shallow mere dotted with half-drowned,
+rushy islets, and swarming with crocodiles.
+After some hesitation, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>To Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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, Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m had reason to
+congratulate himself upon his venture into this strange
+fellowship. First, for instance, he saw a herd of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>
+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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>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. Gr&ocirc;m, 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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span>
+unpleasant, which steamed up from the dry, hot surface
+all about him.</p>
+<p>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&ndash;&ndash;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&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; she whispered, staring at the unstable
+surface in a kind of horror.</p>
+<p>Before he could reply, cries and shouts arose among
+the tribe behind him, and they all rushed forward,
+almost sweeping Gr&ocirc;m and A-ya from their feet.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span>
+was creating the horrible, bulging undulation on the
+plain.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m&#8217;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.</p>
+<p>His first impulse, naturally, was to turn back&ndash;&ndash;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.</p>
+<p>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, Gr&ocirc;m then ordered
+the tribe to advance cautiously, keeping the same wide-open
+formation, while he himself brought up the rear.</p>
+<p>But in a few minutes every one, from Gr&ocirc;m downwards,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span>
+came to a halt irresistibly, in order to watch
+the monstrous drama unfolding behind them.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>Thrilled with the wonder and the horror of it, Gr&ocirc;m
+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.</p>
+<p>A confused cry of alarm went up from the watching
+tribe, as they saw a forest of waving trunks appear in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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 Gr&ocirc;m, 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span>
+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.</p>
+<p>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
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span>
+to a halt, got itself turned to the left, and went thundering
+off on the trail of the sambur remnants.</p>
+<p>Gr&ocirc;m 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.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;'>THE END</p>
+
+<!-- generated by ppg.rb version: ppg0522 -->
+<!-- timestamp: Sun May 24 04:18:12 -0600 2009 -->
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's In the Morning of Time, by Charles G. D. Roberts
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+</pre>
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+</body>
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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
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