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 mères 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.