THE RESCUE OF A-YA
The clay-colored, ape-like, bow-legged men squatted in council.
It was not long, as time went in the long, slow morning of the
world--perhaps a half-score thousand years or so--since their
ancestors, in the pride of their dawning intelligence, had swung down
from their tree-tops, to walk upright on the solid earth and challenge
the supremacy of the hunting beasts. Their arms were still of an
unhuman and ungainly length, their short powerful legs were still so
heavily bowed that they had no great speed in running; and they still
had their homes high among the branches, where they could sleep secure
from surprise. They were still tree dwellers; but they were men,
intent upon asserting their lordship over all the other dwellers upon
earth's surface.
They were not beautiful to look upon. Their squat, powerful forms,
varying in color from a dingy yellow-brown to blackish mud-color, were
covered unevenly with a thin growth of dark hairs. On thigh and
shoulder, down the backbone, and on the outer side of the long
forearm, this growth was heavier and longer, forming a sort of
irregular thatch; while the hair of their heads was jet black, and
matted into a filthy tangle with grease and clay. Their faces were
broad and flat, with powerful protruding jaws, low and very receding
foreheads, and wide noses which seemed to have been punched in at the
bridge so that the flaring red nostrils turned upwards hideously.
It was but a battered and crestfallen remnant of the tribe which now
took counsel over their diminished fortunes. In an irregular
half-circle they squatted, pawing gingerly at their wounds or
scratching themselves uncouthly, while their apish women loitered in
chattering groups outside the circle, or crouched in the branches of
the neighboring trees. Those who were perched in the trees mostly held
babies at their breasts, and were therefore instinctively distrustful
of the dangerous ground-levels. Here and there on the outskirts of the
crowd, either squatting on hillocks or clinging in a tree-top,
wary-eyed old women kept watch against surprise; though there were few
among either beasts or men who would be likely to venture an attack
upon the ferocious tribe of the Bow-legs.
On a low, flat-topped bowlder, which served the purpose of a throne,
sat the Chief of the Bow-legs, playing with his unwieldy club (which
was merely the root end of a sapling hacked into shape with sharp
stones), as if it had been a bulrush. In height and bulk he was far
above his fellows, though similar to them in general type except for
the matter of color, which was dark almost to blackness. His jaws were
those of a beast, and his whole appearance was bestial beyond that of
any other in the whole hideous throng--except for his eyes. These,
though small and deep-set, blazed with fierce intelligence, and swept
his audience with an air of assured mastery which made plain why he
was chief. He was talking rapidly, with broad gestures, and in a
barking, clicking speech which sounded little more than half
articulate. He was working himself up into a rage; and the squatting
listeners wriggled apprehensively, while they applauded from time to
time with grunts and growls.
Near the end of the foremost rank of the semi-circle, very close to
the haranguing Chief, sat one who was plainly of superior race to his
companions. Something in the harangue seemed to concern him
particularly, for he sprang to his feet and stood leaning on his
club--which was longer and more symmetrically fashioned than that of
the chief. In color he was manifestly white, for all that dirt and
the weather could do to disguise it. He was taller even than the great
Black Chief himself--but shorter in the body, and achieving his
height through length and straightness of leg. He had chest and
shoulders of enormous power; but, unlike the barrel-shaped Bow-legs
he was comparatively slim of waist and hips. He had less hair on
the body--except on the chest and forearm--than his companions;
but far more on the head, where it stood out all around like an
immense black-tawny mane. His face, though heavy and lowering, _was_
a face--with square, resolute jaws, a modelled mouth, a big,
fully-bridged nose, and a spacious forehead. His eyes were blue, and
now, deep under their shaggy brows, glared upon the Chief with
desperate defiance. Close behind his heels crouched a girl,
obviously of his own race--a tall, strong, shapely figure of a
woman, as could well be seen, though her attitude was one of utter
dejection, her face sunk upon her knees, and half her body hidden
in the tangled torrent of her dull chestnut hair.
The tall alien, so dauntlessly eyeing the Chief, was Mawg the
renegade. Arrogant in his folly, he had not realized that the Tree Men
would hold him to account for the calamity which he had brought upon
them. He had not realized that the girl A-ya, with her straight limbs
and her strong comeliness, might stir the craving of others besides
himself. Now, as he listened to the fierce harangue of the Chief, as
his alert ears caught the mutterings behind and about him, he saw the
pit yawn suddenly at his feet. But though a brute and a traitor, he
was no coward. His veins began to run hot, his sinews to stretch for
the death struggle which would presently be upon him.
As for the girl, unseeing, unhearing, her head bowed between her naked
knees, she cared nothing. She loathed life, and all about her,
equally. Her baby and her lord, if they yet lived, were far away
beyond the mountains and the swamps, in the caverned hillside behind
the smoke of the fires. Her captor, Mawg, she loathed above all; but
she was here behind him because he held her always within reach lest
the filthy women of the Bow-legs should tear her to pieces.
Suddenly, without looking around, Mawg spoke to her, in their own
tongue, which the Bow-legs could not understand. "Be ready, girl. They
are going to kill me now. The Black Chief wants you. But I kill him
and we run. They are all dirt. _Come!_"
On the word, he sprang straight at the great Black Chief, where he
towered upon his rock. But the girl, though she heard every syllable,
never stirred.
The spring of Mawg was like a leopard's; but the Black Chief, though
slow of foot, was not slow of hand or wits. Though taken by surprise,
he swung up his club in time to partly parry Mawg's lightning stroke,
which would otherwise have broken his bull neck. As it was, the club
was almost beaten from his grasp. He dropped it with a snarl and
leaped at his assailant's throat with clutching hands.
Had it been possible to fight it out man to man, Mawg would have liked
nothing better, though the issue would have been a doubtful one. But
he had no mind to face the whole tribe, which was now surging forward
like a pack of wolves. He had no time to repeat his blow fairly; but
as he eluded the gigantic, clutching fingers he got in a light
glancing stroke with the butt which laid open his adversary's cheek
and closed one furious little eye. At the same instant he whirled away
lithely, sprang from the rock on the further side, and ran off like a
deer through the trees, cursing the girl because she had not followed
him. About half the tribe went trailing after him, yelling hoarsely,
while the rest drew back and waited uneasily to see what their Chief
would do.
The Chief, clapping one hairy hand over his wounded eye, glared after
the fugitive with the other. But he knew the folly of trying to catch
his fleet-footed adversary, and after a moment he dismissed him from
his mind. With a grunt he stepped down from his rock, and heedless of
his wound, strode over to the girl. Through all the tumult she had
never lifted her head from between her knees, or shown the least sign
of concern. The Chief seized her by the shoulder and shook her
roughly, ordering her to come with him. She did not understand his
language, but his meaning was obvious. She looked up and stared
straight into his one open eye. In her own eyes shifted the dangerous,
lambent flame of a beast at bay, and for a moment she was on the point
of darting at his throat.
But not without reason was the Black Chief dictator of the Bow-legs.
Brutal and filthy though he was, and hideous beyond description, and
horrible with his gashed face and the blood pouring down over his huge
and shaggy chest, he was all a man, and the mastery in him checked
her. She felt the hopelessness of fighting her fate. The flame
flickered out, leaving her eyes dull and leaden. She rose listlessly,
and followed her new lord to the tree in which he had his dwelling of
woven branches.
At the foot of the tree the Black Chief stopped, stood back, and
signed the girl to ascend. A climber as expert as himself, she
clutched the rough trunk with accustomed hands. Then she hesitated,
and shut her eyes. Should she obey, yielding to her fate? Mawg, her
late captor, she had hated with a murderous hate; yet she had
submitted to him, in a dim way biding her time for vengeance. He was
of her own race; and it was in her mind, her spirit--though she
herself could not so analyze the emotion--that she hated him. But this
new master was an alien, and of a lower, beastlier type. Toward him
she felt a sick bodily repulsion. Behind her tight-shut lids the dark
went red. She stood rigid and quivering, stormed through by a raging
impulse to tear out either his throat or her own. She was herself a
more advanced product of her own advanced race, and urged by impulses
still new and imperfectly applied to life. But the countless centuries
of submission were in her blood also; and they whispered to her
insidiously that she was lawful prey. A huge hand fell significantly
upon the back of her neck. She jumped, gave a sobbing cry, and sprang
up into the tree. Who was she to challenge doom for an idea, a hundred
thousand years before her time.
* * * * *
Some days' journey to the westward of the swampy refuge of the
Bow-legs, a tall hunter was making his way warily through the forest.
His color, his build, and his swift grace of movement proclaimed him
of the same race as Mawg and the girl A-ya, acquitting him easily of
any kinship with the People of the Trees. In height and weight he was
much like Mawg, but lighter in complexion, somewhat less hairy, and of
a frank, sagacious countenance. His eyes were of a blue-gray, calm and
piercing, yet with a look in them as of one who broods on mysteries.
He was obviously much older than Mawg, his long, thick hair and short,
close-curling beard being liberally touched with gray. He carried in
one hand a peculiar long-handled club, which he had fashioned by
lashing, with strips of green hide, a split and jagged flint-stone
into the cleft head of a stick. In the other hand he bore two long,
slender spears, their tips hardened and pointed in fire.
On the day, now many weeks back, when Grom set out from the Caves
behind the Fire to seek for A-ya in the far-off country of the
Bow-legs, he had carried also two hollow tubes of green bark, with the
seeds of fire, kept smouldering in a bed of punk, hidden in the hearts
of them. But the need of stopping frequently to build a fire and renew
the vitality of the secret spark had soon exasperated his impatient
spirit. Intolerant of the hindrance, and confident in his own strength
and craft, he had thrown the fire-tubes away and fallen back upon the
weapons which had sufficed him before his discovery and conquest of
the Shining One.
Engrossed in his purpose, thinking only of regaining possession of the
girl, the mother of his man-child, he shunned all contest with the
great beasts which crossed his path, and fled without shame from those
which undertook to hunt him.
He would risk no doubtful battle. He satisfied his hunger on wild
honey, and the ripe fruits and tubers with which the forest abounded
at this season. At night he made his nest, of hurriedly woven
branches, in the highest swaying of the tree-tops, where not even the
leopard, cunning climber though she was, could come at him without
giving timely warning. And so, doggedly and swiftly making his way due
east, he came at length to the fringes of that vast region of swampy
meres and fruitful, rankly wooded islets which was occupied by the
Bow-legs.
Here he had need of all that wood-craft which had so often enabled him
to stalk even the wary antelope. The light color of his skin being a
betrayal, he rubbed himself with clayey ooze till he was of the same
hue as the Bow-legs. Crawling through the undergrowth at dusk as
soundlessly as a snake, or swinging along smoothly through the
branches like a gray ape in the first confusing glimmer of the dawn,
he made short incursions among the outlying colonies, but could find
no sign of the girl, or Mawg, in whose hands he imagined her still to
be. But working warily around the outskirts of the tribe, to
northward, he came at last upon the stale but unmistakable trail of a
flight and a pursuit. This he followed up till the pursuit came
stragglingly to an end, and the trail of the fugitive stood out alone
and distinct. One clear footprint in the wet earth revealed itself
clearly as Mawg's--for there was no such thing as confounding that
arched and moulded imprint with those left by the apish men.
Feverishly the hunter cast about for another trail, smaller and
slimmer. Forward he searched for it, and then back among the trampings
of the pursuers. But in vain. Clearly Mawg had been the sole
fugitive.
Grom sat down in sudden despair. If Mawg, who at least was no coward,
had fled alone, then surely the girl was dead. Grom's club and his
spears dropped from his nerveless hands. His interest in life sank
into a sick indifference, a dull anguish which he did not even try to
understand. It was well for him that no prowling beast came by in that
moment of his unseeing weakness. Then a new thought came to him, and
his despair flamed into rage. He leapt to his feet, clutching at his
shaggy beard. The girl had been seized, without doubt, by the great
Black Chief. The thought of this defilement to his woman, the mother
of his man-child, drove him quite mad for the moment. Snatching up his
weapons, he roared with anguish, and ran blindly forward along the
trampled trail, ready to hurl himself upon the whole loathsome tribe.
A gigantic leopard, crouching in a thicket of scarlet poinsettia
beside the trail, made as if to pounce upon him as he went by--but
shrank back, instead, with flattened ears, daunted by his fury.
But presently the madness burned itself out. As sanity returned he
checked his rush, glanced once more watchfully about him, and at
length stepped furtively into the thick of the jungle. Now more than
ever was his coolest craft demanded, that A-ya might be plucked from
the monster's arms.
Following up the plain clue of that tremendous pursuit, Grom worked
his way deep into the Bow-legs' country. With all his craft and his
lynx-like stealth, it was at times hair-raising work. Not only the
ground thickets, but the tree-tops as well, were swarming with his
keen-eyed foes. He had to worm his way between swamp-sodden roots, and
sometimes lie moveless as a stone for hours, enduring the stings of a
million insects. Sometimes, not daring to lift his head to look about
him, he had to trust to his ears and his hound-like sense of smell for
information as to what was going on. And sometimes it was only his
tireless immobility that saved him from the stroke of a startled adder
or a questioning and indignant crotalus. After long swaying, poised
for the death-stroke, the serpent would decide that the menacing thing
before it was not alive. It would slowly dissolve its tense coils, and
glide away; and Grom would resume his shadowy progress.
Then, about sunrise (for the Bow-legs, like the birds, were early
risers) of the second day after the discovery of Mawg's footprints,
the patient hunter's eyes fell upon A-ya. He had crept in to within a
hundred yards or so of the Council Rock, which was surrounded by a
horde of the Bow-legs. Crouching low as he was, in a dense thicket,
Grom's view was limited; but he could see, over the heads of the
listening mob, the Black Chief seated on the rock, his ragged club in
his hand. He was haranguing his warriors in rapid clicks and
gutturals, which conveyed no meaning to Grom's ear. The harangue came
soon to an end. The Chief stood up. The bestial crowd parted--and
through the opening Grom saw A-ya, crouched, with her hair over her
knees, at the Chief's feet. Stepping down from the rock, the Chief
seized her by the wrist and dragged her upright. She took her place at
his heels, dejectedly, like a whipped dog. Grom, from within his
thicket, ground his teeth, and with difficulty held himself in leash.
Surrounded as A-ya was, at that moment, by the hordes of her captors,
any attempt at her rescue would have been hopeless folly.
There was something going on among the bow-legged mob which Grom, from
his hiding-place could not at first make out. Then he saw that the
Chief was trying to instruct his powerful but clumsy followers in the
handling of the club and spear. Having been taught by the white
renegade, Mawg, the Chief used his massive club with skill, but he was
still clumsy and absurdly inaccurate in throwing the spear. After he
had split the face of one of his followers by a misdirected cast, he
gave up the spear-throwing, turned to the girl, and ordered her to
teach this art of her people. It was obvious that the mob had vast
confidence in her powers, as one of superior race, although a mere
woman, for they opened out at once on two sides to leave room for the
expected display. The heart of the watcher in the thicket began to
thump as he saw a way clearing itself between his hiding-place and the
wild-haired woman he loved.
A-ya affected to misunderstand the Chief's orders. She took the spear,
but stood holding it in stupid dejection. The Chief threatened her
angrily, but she paid no attention. At this moment the whistling cry
of a plover sounded from the thicket. The girl straightened herself
and every muscle grew tense. The melancholy cry came again. It was a
strange place for a plover to lurk in, that rank thicket of jungle;
but the Bow-legs took no notice of the incongruity. Upon the girl,
however, the effect of the cry was magical. She gave no glance toward
the thicket, but suddenly, smilingly, she seemed to understand the
orders of the Chief. Poising the rude spear at the height of her
shoulder, she pointed to a huge, whitish fungus which grew upon a
tree-root some sixty or seventy feet away. With a flexing of her whole
lithe body--as Grom had taught her--she made her throw. The white
fungus was split in halves.
With a hoarse clamor of admiration, the mob surged forward to examine
the fragments. Even the Chief, though disdaining to show the interest
of his followers, took a stride or two in the same direction. For a
second his back was turned. In that second, the girl fled, light and
swift as a deer, speeding toward the thicket whence the cry of the
plover had sounded. Her long bushy hair streamed out behind her as she
ran.
With a bellow of wrath, the Black Chief, the whole mob at his heels,
came pounding after her. The next instant, out from the thicket leapt
Grom, a towering figure, and stood with spear uplifted. Like a lion at
bay, he glanced swiftly this way and that, balancing the chances of
battle and escape, while he menaced the foes immediately confronting
him.
At this amazing apparition, the mob paused irresolute; but the Black
Chief came on like a mad buffalo. Grom hurled one of his two spears.
He hurled it with a loathing fury; but he was compelled to throw high,
to clear A-ya's head. The Chief saw it coming, and cunningly flung
himself forward on his face. The weapon hurtled on viciously, and
pierced the squat body of one of the waverers a dozen paces behind. At
his yell of agony the mob woke up, and came on again with guttural,
barking cries. But already Grom and the girl, side by side, were
fleeing down an open glade to the left, toward a breadth of still
water which they saw gleaming through the trunks. Grom knew that the
way behind him was swarming with the enemy. He had seen that there was
no chance of getting through the hordes in front and to the right. But
in this direction there were only a few knots of shaggy women, who
shrank in terror at his approach; and he gambled on the chance of the
bow-legged men having no great skill in the water.
All the Folk of the Caves could swim like otters, and both Grom and
the girl were expert beyond their fellows. The water before them was
some three or four hundred yards in width. They did not know whether
it was a sluggish fenland river, or the arm of a lake; but, heedless
of the peril of crocodiles and water-snakes they plunged in, and with
long powerful side-strokes went surging across toward the opposite
shore. They had a clear start of thirty or forty yards, and their pace
in the water was tremendous. Some heavy splashes in the water behind
them showed how the clumsy missiles of their foes--ragged clubs and
fragments of broken branches--were falling short; and they looked back
derisively.
The bow-legged, shaggy men with their wide, red, skyward nostrils were
ranged along the shore, and the Chief was fiercely urging them into
the water. They shrank back in horror at the prospect--which, indeed,
seemed little to the taste of the Chief himself. Presently he seized
the two nearest by their matted manes, and flung them headlong in.
With yells of terror they scrambled out again, and scurried off to the
rear like half-drowned hens.
The Chief screeched an order. Straightway the mob divided. One part
went racing clumsily up the shore to the left, the other followed the
Chief along through the rank sedge-growth to the right--the Chief, by
reason of his superior stature and length of leg, rapidly opening up
his lead.
"It's nothing but a pond," said Grom, in disgust, "and they're coming
round the shore to head us off."
But the girl, her hair trailing darkly on the water behind her, only
laughed. She was free at last. And she was with her man.
Suddenly Grom felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the calf of his leg. With
a cry, he looked back, expecting to see a water-snake gliding off. He
saw nothing. But in the next instant another stab came in the other
leg. Then A-ya screamed: "They're biting me all over." A dozen
stinging punctures distributed themselves all at once over Grom's
body. Then he understood that their assailants were not water-snakes.
"Quick! To shore!" he ordered. Throwing all their strength into a
breath-sapping, over-hand roll, they shot forward, gained the weedy
shallows, and scrambled ashore. Their bodies were hung thickly with
gigantic leeches.
Heedless of the wounds and the drench of blood, they tore off their
loathsome assailants. Then, after a few seconds' halt to regain breath
and decide on their direction, they started northwestward at a rapid,
swinging lope, through a region of open, grassy glades set with
thickets of giant fern and mimosa.
They had run on at this free pace for a matter of half-an-hour or
more, and were beginning to flatter themselves that they had shaken
off their pursuers, when almost directly ahead of them, to the right,
appeared the Black Chief, lumbering down upon them. Nearly half-a-mile
behind, between the mimosa clumps, could be seen the mob of his
followers straggling up to his support. He yelled a furious challenge,
swung up his great club, and charged upon Grom. Waving A-ya behind
him, Grom strode forward, accepting the challenge.
As man to man, the rivals looked not unfairly matched. The fair-skinned
Man of the Caves was the taller by half a head, but obviously the
lighter in weight by a full stone, if not more. His long, straight,
powerfully muscled legs had not the massive strength of his bow-legged
adversary's. He was even slim, by comparison, in hip and waist. But
in chest, arms and shoulders his development was finer. Physically,
it seemed a matter of the lion against the bear.
To Grom there was one thing almost as vital, in that moment, as the
rescue of his woman. This was the slaking of his lust of hate against
the filthy beast-man who had held that woman captive. Fading ancestral
instincts flamed into new life within him. His impulse was to fling
down spear and club, to fall upon his rival with bare, throttling
hands and rending teeth. But his will, and his realization of all that
hung upon the outcome, held this madness in check.
Silent and motionless, poised lightly and gathered as if for a spring,
Grom waited till his adversary was within some thirty paces of him.
Then, with deadly force and sure aim, he hurled his one remaining
spear. But he had not counted on the lightning accuracy, swifter than
thought itself, with which the men of the trees used their huge hands.
The Black Chief caught the spear-head within a few inches of his body.
With a roar of rage he snapped the tough shaft like a parsnip stalk,
and threw the pieces aside. Even as he did so, Grom, still voiceless
and noiseless, was upon him.
Had the vicious swing of Grom's flint-headed club found its mark, the
battle would have been over. But the Black Chief, for all his bulk,
was quick as an eel. He bowed himself to the earth, so that the stroke
whistled idly over him, and in the next second he swung a vicious,
short blow upwards. It was well-aimed, at the small of Grom's back.
But the latter, feeling himself over-balanced by his own ineffective
violence, leapt far out of reach before turning to see what had
happened. The Chief recovered himself, and the two lashed out at each
other so exactly together that the great clubs met in mid-air. So
shattering was the force of the impact, so numbing the shock to the
hairy wrists behind it, that both weapons dropped to the ground.
Neither antagonist dared stoop to snatch them up. For several seconds
they stood glaring at each other, their breath hissing through
clenched teeth, their knotted fingers opening and shutting. Then they
sprang at each other's throats--Grom in silence, the Black Chief
snarling hoarsely. Neither, however, gained the fatal grip at which he
aimed. They found themselves in a fair clinch, and stood swaying,
straining, sweating, and grunting, so equally matched in sheer
strength that to A-ya, standing breathless with suspense, the dreadful
seconds seemed to drag themselves out to hours. Then Grom, amazed to
find that in brute force he had met his match, feigned to give way.
Loosing the clutch of one arm, he dropped upon his knees. With a grunt
of triumph the Black Chief crashed down upon him, only to find himself
clutched by the legs and hurled clean over his wily adversary's head.
Before he could recover himself, Grom was upon him, pinning him to the
earth and reaching for his throat. In desperation he set his huge ape
teeth, with the grip of a bull-dog, deep into the muscular base of
Grom's neck, and began working his way in toward the artery.
At this moment A-ya glanced about her. She saw two bodies of the
Bow-legs closing in upon them from either side--the nearest not much
more than a couple of hundred yards distant. Her lord had plainly
ordered her to stand aside from this combat, but this was no time for
obedience. She snatched up the sharpened fragment of the broken spear.
Gripping it with both hands she drove it with all her force into the
side of the Black Chief's throat, and left it there. With a hideous
cough his grip relaxed. His limbs straightened out stiffly, and he lay
quivering.
Covered with blood, Grom sprang to his feet, and turned angrily upon
A-ya. "_I_ would have killed him," he said, coldly.
"There was no time," answered the girl, and pointed to the advancing
hordes.
Without a word Grom snatched up his club, wrenched the broken spear
from his dead rival's neck, thrust it into the girl's hands, and
darted for the narrowing space of open between the two converging
mobs.
With their greatly superior speed it was obvious that the two
fugitives might reasonably expect to win through. They were surprised,
therefore, at the note of triumph in the furious cries of the
Bow-legs. A few hundred yards ahead the comparatively open country
came to an end, and its place was taken by a belt of splendid crimson
bloom, extending to right and left as far as the eye could see. It was
a jungle of shrubs some twenty feet high, with scanty, pale-green
leaves almost hidden by their exuberance of blossom. But jungle though
it was, Grom's sagacious eyes decided that it was by no means dense
enough to seriously hinder their flight. When they reached it, the
jabbering hordes were almost upon them. But, with mocking laughter,
they slipped through, and plunged in among the gray stems, beneath the
overshadowed rosy glow. Their pursuers yelled wildly--it seemed to
Grom a yell of exultation--but they halted abruptly at the edge of the
rosy barrier and made no attempt to follow.
"They know they can't catch us," said Grom, slackening his pace. But
the girl, puzzled by this sudden stopping of the pursuit, felt uneasy
and made no reply.
Loping onward at moderate pace through the enchanting pink light,
which filtered down about them through the massed bloom overhead, they
presently became conscious of an oppressive silence. The cries of
their pursuers having died away behind them, there was now nothing but
the soft thud of their own footfalls to relieve the anxious intentness
of their ears. Not a bird-note, not the flutter of a wing, not the hum
or the darting of a single insect, disturbed the strangely heavy air.
No snake or lizard or squeaking mouse scurried among the fallen
leaves. They wondered greatly at such stillness. Then they wondered at
the absence of small undergrowth, the lack of other shrubs and trees
such as were wont to grow together in the warm jungle. Nothing
anywhere about them but the endless gray stems and pallid slim leaves
of the oleander, with their rose-red roof of blossom.
Presently they felt a lethargy creeping over their limbs, which began
to grow heavy; and a dull pain came throbbing behind their eyes. Then
understanding of those cries of triumph flashed into Grom's mind. He
stopped and clutched the girl by the wrist. "It is poison here. It is
death," he muttered. "That's why they shouted."
"Yes, everything is dead but the red flowers," whispered A-ya, and
clung to him, shuddering with awe.
"Courage!" cried Grom, lifting his head and dashing his great hand
across his eyes. "We _must_ get through. We _must_ find air."
Shaking off the deadly sloth, they ran on again at full speed, peering
through the stems in every direction. The effort made their brains
throb fiercely. And still there was nothing before them and about them
but the endless succession of slender gray stems and the downpour of
that sinister rosy light. At last A-ya's steps began to lag, as if she
were growing sleepy.
"Wake up!" shouted Grom, and dragged so fiercely at her arm that she
cried out. But the pain aroused her to a new effort. She sprang
forward, sobbing. The next moment, she was jerked violently to the
left. "This way!" panted Grom, the sweat pouring down his livid face;
and there, through the stems to the left, her dazed eyes perceived
that the hated rosy glow was paling into the whiteness of the natural
day.
It was a big white rock, an island thrust up through the sea of
treacherous bloom. With fumbling, nerveless fingers they scaled its
bare sides, flung themselves down among the scant but wholesome
herbage, which clothed its top, and filled their lungs with the clean,
reviving air. Dimly they heard a blessed buzzing of insects, and
several great flies, with barred wings, lit upon them and bit them
sharply. They lay with closed eyes, while slowly the throbbing in
their brains died away and strength flowed back into their unstrung
limbs.
Then, after perhaps an hour, Grom sat up and looked about him. On
every side outspread the fatal flood of the rose-red oleanders,
unbroken except toward the north-west. In that quarter, however, a
spur of the giant forest, of growths too mighty to feel the spell of
the envenomed blooms, was thrust deep into the crimson tide. Its tip
came to within a couple of hundred yards of the rock. Having fully
recovered, Grom and A-ya swung down, with loathing, into the pink
gloom, fled through it almost without drawing breath, and found
themselves once more in the rank green shadows of the jungle. They
went on till they came to a thicket of plantains. Then, loading
themselves with ripe fruit, they climbed high into a tree, and wove
themselves a safe resting-place among the branches.
For the next few days their journey was without adventure, save for
the frequent eluding of the monsters of that teeming world. Grom had
his club, A-ya her broken spear; but they were avoiding all combats in
their haste to get back to their own country of the homely caves and
the guardian watch-fires. At the approach of the great black lion or
the saber-tooth, or the wantonly malignant rhinoceros, they betook
themselves to the tree-tops, and continued their way by that aerial
path as long as it served them. The most subtle of the beasts they
knew they could outwit, and their own anxiety now was Mawg, whose
craft and courage Grom could no longer hold in scorn. He was doubtless
at large, and quite possibly on their trail, biding his time to catch
them unawares. They never allowed themselves, therefore, to sleep both
at the same time. One always kept on guard: and hence their progress,
for all their eagerness, was slower than it would otherwise have
been.
On a certain day, after a long unbroken stretch of travel, A-ya rested
and kept watch in a tree-top, while Grom went to fetch a bunch of
plantains. It was fairly open country, a region of low herbage dotted
with small groves and single trees; and the girl, herself securely
hidden, could see in every direction. She could see Grom wandering
from plantain clump to plantain clump, seeking fruit ripe enough to be
palatable. And then, with a shiver of hate and dread, she saw the dark
form of Mawg, creeping noiselessly on Grom's trail, and not more than
a couple of hundred paces behind him. At the very moment when her eyes
fell upon him, he dropped flat upon his face, and began worming his
way soundlessly through the herbage.
Her mouth opened wide to give the alarm. But the cry stopped in her
throat, and a smile of bitter triumph spread over her face.
If Mawg was hunting Grom, he was at the same time himself being
hunted. And by a dreadful hunter.
Out from behind a thicket of glowing mimosa appeared a monstrous bird,
some ten or twelve feet in height, lifting its feet very high in a
swift but noiseless and curiously delicate stride. Its dark plumage
was more like long, stringy hair than feathers. Its build was
something like that of a gigantic cassowary, but its thighs and long
blue shanks were proportionately more massive. Its neck was long, but
immensely muscular to support the enormous head, which was larger than
that of a horse, and armed with a huge, hooked, rending, vulture's
beak. The apparent length of this terrible head was increased by a
pointed crest of blood-red feathers, projecting straight back in a
line with the fore-part of the skull and the beak.
The crawling figure of Mawg was still a good hundred paces from the
unsuspecting Grom, when the great bird overtook it. A-ya, watching
from her tree-top, clutched a branch and held her breath. Mawg's ears
caught a sound behind him, and he glanced around sharply. With a
scream, he bounded to his feet. But it was too late. Before he could
either strike or flee, he was beaten down again, with a smash of that
pile-driving beak. The bird planted one huge foot on its victim's
loins, gripped his head in its beak, and neatly snapped his neck. Then
it fell greedily to its hideous meal.
At Mawg's scream of terror, Grom had turned and rushed to the rescue,
swinging his club. But before he had covered half the distance, he saw
that the monster had done its work; and he hesitated. He was too late
to help the victim. And he knew the mettle of this ferocious bird,
almost as much to be dreaded, in single combat, as the saber-tooth
itself. At his approach, the bird had lifted its dripping beak, half
turned, and stood gripping the prey with one foot, swaying its grim
head slowly and eyeing him with malevolent defiance. Still he
hesitated, fingering his club; for the insolence of that challenging
stare made his blood seethe. Then came A-ya's voice from the tree-top,
calling him. "Come away!" she cried. "It was Mawg."
Whereupon he turned, with the content of one who sees all old scores
cleanly wiped out together, and went back to gather his ripe
plantains.
The peril of Mawg being thus removed from their path, they journeyed
more swiftly; and when the next new moon was a thin white sickle in
the sky, just above the line of saw-toothed hills, they came safely
back to the comfortable caves and the clear-burning watch-fires of
their tribe.