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