Part 10 (1/2)
The light stuff, with an immense number of short, highly-inflammable f.a.ggots, was piled inside the doorway where no rain could reach it. And the heavy wood was stacked outside, to right and left, in such a fas.h.i.+on as to form practical ramparts for the innermost line of defense.
Directly in front of the cave spread a small fan-shaped plateau several hundred square yards in area. On the right a narrow path, wide enough for but one wayfarer at a time, descended between perpendicular boulders to the second cave. On the left the plateau was bordered by broken ground, a jumble of serrated rocks, to be traversed only with difficulty. In front there was a steep but shallow dip, from which the land sloped gently up the valley, clothed with high bush and deep thickets intersected with innumerable narrow trails.
Directly in front of the cave, and about the center of the plateau, burned always, night and day, the sacred fire, tended in turn by the members of the little band appointed to this distinguished service by the Chief. Under the Chief's direction the whole of the plateau was now cleared of underbrush and gra.s.s, and then along its brink was laid a chain of small fires, some ten or twelve feet apart, and all ready for lighting.
Meanwhile, Grom was busy preparing the device on which, according to his plan of campaign, the ultimate issue was to hang. For days the tribe was kept on the stretch collecting dry and leafy brushwood from the other side of the valley, and bundles of dead gra.s.s from the rich savannahs beyond the valley-mouth, on the other side of the dancing flames. All this inflammable stuff Grom distributed lavishly through the thickets before the plateau, to a distance of nearly a mile up the slope, till the whole s.p.a.ce was in reality one vast bonfire laid ready for the torch.
While these preparations were being rushed--somewhat to the perplexity of the tribe, who could not fathom the tactics of stuffing the landscape with rubbish--Bawr was keeping a little band of scouts on guard at the far-off head of the valley. They were chosen from the swift runners of the tribe; and Bawr, who was a far-seeing general, had them relieved twice in twenty-four hours, that they might not grow weary and fail in vigilance.
When all was ready came a time of trying suspense. As day after day rolled by without event, cloudless and hot, the country became as dry as tinder; and the tribe, seeing that nothing unusual happened, began to doubt or to forget the danger that hung over them. There were murmurs over the strain of ceaseless watching, murmurs which Bawr suppressed with small ceremony. But the lame Ook-ootsk, squatting misshapen in Grom's doorway with A-ya's baby in his ape-like arms grew more and more anxious. As he conveyed to Grom, the longer the delay the greater the force which was being gathered for the a.s.sault.
Having no inkling of Grom's larger designs, he looked with distrust on the little heaps of wood that were to be fires along the edge of the plateau, and wished them to be piled much bigger, intimating that his people, though they would be terribly afraid of the s.h.i.+ning One, would be forced on from behind by sheer numbers and would trample the small fires out. The confidence of the Chief and Grom, and of A-ya as well, in the face of the awful peril which hung over them, filled him with amazement.
Then, at last, one evening just in the dying flush of the sunset, came the scouts, running breathlessly, and one with a ragged spear-wound in his shoulder. Their eyes were wide as they told of the countless myriads of the Bow-legs who were pouring into the head of the valley, led by Mawg and a gigantic black-faced chief as tall as Bawr himself.
”Are they as many,” asked Grom, ”as they who came against us in the Little Hills?”
But the panting men threw up their hands.
”As a swarm of locusts to a flock of starlings,” they replied.
To their astonishment the Chief smiled with grim satisfaction at this appalling news.
”It is well,” said he. Mounting a rock by the cave-door, he gazed up the valley, striving to make out the vanguard of the approaching hordes; while Grom, marshalling the servitors of the fire, stationed them by the range of piles, ready to set light to them on the given word.
It was nearly an hour--so swift had been the terror of the scouts--before a low, terrible sound of cras.h.i.+ngs and mutterings announced that the hordes were drawing near. It was now twilight, with the first stars appearing in a pallid violet sky; and up the valley could be discerned an obscurely rolling confusion among the thickets. Bawr gave orders, rapid and concise; and the combatants lined out in a double rank along the front of the plateau some three or four paces behind the piles of wood.
They were armed with stone-headed clubs, large or small, according to personal taste, and each carried at least three flint-tipped spears.
At the head of the narrow path leading up from the lower cave were stationed half a dozen women, similarly armed. Bawr had chosen these women because each of them had one or more young children in the cave behind her; and he knew that no adventurous foe would get up that path alive. But A-ya was not among these six wild mothers, for her place was at the service of the fires.
The ominous roar and that obscure confusion rolled swiftly nearer, and Bawr, with a swing of his huge club, sprang down from his post of observation and strode to the front. Grom shouted an order, and light was set to all the crescent of fires. They flared up briskly; and at the same time the big central fire, which had been allowed to sink to a heap of glowing coals, was heaped with dry stuff which sent up an instant column of flame. The sudden wide illumination, shed some hundreds of yards up the valley, revealed the front ranks of the Bow-legs swarming in the brush, their hideous yellow faces, gaping nostrils and pig-like eyes all turned up in awe towards the glare.
The advance of the front ranks came to an instant halt, and the low muttering rose to a chorus of harsh cries. Then the tall figure of Mawg sprang to the front, followed, after a moment of wondering hesitation, by that of the head chief of the hordes, a ma.s.sive creature of the true Bow-leg type, but as tall as Bawr himself, and in color almost black. This giant and Mawg, refusing to be awed by the tremendous phenomenon of the fire, went leaping along the lines of their followers, urging them forward, and pointing out that their enemies stood close beside the flames and took no hurt.
On the front ranks themselves this reasoning seemed, at first, to produce little effect. But to those just behind it appeared more cogent, seconded as it was by a consuming curiosity. Moreover, the ma.s.ses in the rear were rolling down, and their pressure presently became irresistible. All at once the front ranks realized that they had no choice in the matter. They sagged forward, surged obstinately back again, then gave like a bursting dam and poured, yelling and leaping, straight onward toward the crescent of fires.
As soon as the rush was fairly begun, both Mawg and the Black Chief cleverly extricated themselves from it, running aside to the higher, broken ground at the left of the plateau whence they could see and direct the attack. It was plain enough that they accounted the front ranks doomed, and were depending on sheer weight of numbers for the inevitable victory.
Standing grim, silent, immovable between their fires, the Chief and Grom awaited the dreadful onset. In all the tribe not a voice was raised, not a fighter, man or woman, quailed. But many hearts stood still, for it looked as if that living flood could never be stayed.
Presently from all along its front came a cloud of spears. But they fell short, not more than half a dozen reaching the edge of the plateau. In instant response came a deep-chested shout from Bawr, followed by a discharge of spears from behind the line of fire.
These spears, driven with free arm and practised skill, went clean home in the packed ranks of the foe, but they caused no more than a second's wavering, as the dead went down and their fellows crowded on straight over them. A second volley from the grimly silent fighters on the plateau had somewhat more effect. Driven low, and at shorter range, every jagged flint-point found its mark, and the screaming victims hampered those behind. But after a moment the mad flood came on again, till it was within some thirty paces of the edge of the plateau.
Then came a long shout from Grom, a signal which had been anxiously awaited by the front line of his fighters. Each fire had been laid, on the inner side, with dry f.a.ggots of a resinous wood which not only blazed freely but held the flame tenaciously. These f.a.ggots had been placed with only their tips in the fire. Seizing them by their unlighted ends, the warriors hurled them, blazing, full into the gaping faces before them.
The brutal, gaping faces screeched with pain and terror, and the whole front rank, beating frantically at the strange missiles, wheeled about and clawed at the rank behind, battling to force its way through. But the rolling ma.s.ses were not to be denied. After a brief, terrible struggle, the would-be fugitives were borne down and trodden underfoot. The new-comers were greeted with a second discharge of the blazing brands, and the dreadful scene repeated itself. But now there was a difference. For many of the a.s.sailants, realizing that there was no chance of retreat, came straight on, heedless of brand or spear, with the deadly, uncalculating fury of a beast at bay.
For some seconds, under the specific directions of the Chief on the right center and of Grom far to the left, many of the blazing brands had been thrown, not into the faces of the front rank, but far over their heads, to fall among the tinder-dry brushwood. Long tongues of flame leaped up at once, here, there, everywhere, curling and licking savagely. Screeches of horror arose, which brought all the hordes to a halt as far back as they could be heard. A light wind was blowing up the valley, and almost at once the scattered flames, gathering volume, came together with a roar. The hordes, smitten with the blindest madness of panic, turned to flee, springing upon and tearing at each other in the desperate struggle to escape.