Part 18 (1/2)

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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.cious 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 gra.s.sy 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 a.s.sailant 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 a.s.sailants were floating off on the current; but the fiery poison remained, and they bathed each other's scarlet and scorched shoulders a.s.siduously, forgetful for the moment of everything besides. At this moment a gigantic water python reared its head from the leaf.a.ge 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 las.h.i.+ng 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 crus.h.i.+ngly 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 ma.s.ses 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 gra.s.sy plain thrust back the jungle. Along the edge of the plain, skirting the belt of woods, the gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s-land were a favorite lurking-place of the unexpected--and that the unexpected was almost always perilous.

Suddenly from the deeper gra.s.s 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 surpa.s.sing 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 ma.s.sive, 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 gra.s.s.