Part 20 (1/2)

It was rather like working in a nightmare. From time to time would come a rush, a stampede, of deer or tapirs, along the strip of beach between the water and the cliff. The toiling men would draw aside till the rabble went by, then fall to work again.

Once, however, it was a herd of wild cattle, snorting, and tossing their wide, keen-pointed horns; and their trampling onrush filled the whole s.p.a.ce so that the men had to plunge out into deep water to escape. Several, afraid of the big-mouthed, flesh-eating fish which infested the estuary at high tide, stayed too close in sh.o.r.e, and paid for their irresolution by being gored savagely.

It was about the full of the moon and the time of the longest days, and the raft-builders toiled feverishly the whole night through. By sunrise Bawr and Grom estimated that there were rafts enough to carry the whole tribe, provided the present calm held on. They decided, however, to construct several more, in case some should prove less buoyant than they hoped.

But for this most wise provision Fate refused to grant the time.

A naked slip of a girl, her one scant garment of leopard skin caught upon a rock and twitched from off her loins as she ran, came fleeing down the hill-path, her hair afloat upon the fresh morning air.

Straggling far behind her came a crowd of children, and old women carrying babies or bundles of dried meat.

”They must not come yet. They'll be in the way!” cried Bawr angrily, waving them back. But they paid no attention--which showed that there was something they feared more even than the iron-fisted Chief.

”There are none of the young women or the old men, who can fight, among them,” said Grom. ”A-ya must have sent them, because the time has come. Let us wait for the young girl, who seems to bring a message.”

Breathless, and clutching at her bosom with one hand, the girl fell at Bawr's feet.

”A-ya says, 'Come quick!'” she gasped. ”They are too many. They run over the fires and trample us.”

Grom sprang forward with a cry, then stopped and looked at his Chief.

”Go, you,” said Bawr, ”and bring them to us. I will stay here and look to the rafts.”

Taking a half-score of the strongest warriors with him, Grom raced up the steep, torn with anxiety for the fate of A-ya and the children.

It was now about three-quarters tide, and the flood rising strongly.

By way of precaution some of the rafts had been kept afloat, let down with ropes of vine to follow the last ebb, and guided carefully back on the returning flood. But most of them were lying where they had been built, or left by the preceding tide, along high-water mark, as hopelessly stranded, for the next two hours, as a birch log after a freshet. As the old women with children arrived, Bawr rushed them down the wet beach to the rafts which were afloat, appointing to each clumsy raft four men, with long, rough flattened poles, to manage it.

For the moment, all these men had to do was hold their charges in place that they might not be swept away by the incoming tide.

When Grom and his eager handful, pa.s.sing a stream of trembling fugitives on the way, reached the level ground before the Caves, the sight that greeted them was tremendous and appalling. It looked as if some great country to the southward had gathered together all its beasts and then vomited them forth in one vast torrent, confused and irresistible, to the north. It was a wholesale migration, on such a scale as the modern world has never even dreamed of, but suggested in a feeble way by the torrential drift of the bison across the North American plains half a century ago, or the sudden, inexplicable marches of the lemming myriads out of the Scandinavian barrens that give them birth.

The shrill cries of the women, fighting like she-wolves in defense of the children and the home-caves, the hoa.r.s.e shouts of the old men, weak but indomitable, were mingled with an indescribable medley of noises--gruntings, bellowings, howlings, roarings, bleatings and brayings--from the dreadful mob of beasts which besieged the open s.p.a.ce behind the fires. Some of the beasts were maddened with their terror, some were in a fighting rage, some only wanted to escape the throng behind them. But all seemed bent upon pa.s.sing the fires and getting into the Caves, as if they thought there to find refuge from the unknown fear.

At the extreme right of the line the two farthest fires were already overwhelmed, trodden out by frantic hooves, and three or four old men, with a couple of desperate young women, behind a barrier of slain elk and stags were fighting like furies to hold back the victorious onrush. Two of the old men were down, trodden out between the fires by blind hooves, and a third, jammed limply against the rocky wall beside the furthest cave, was being worried by a bear--hideously but aimlessly, as if the great beast hardly heeded what it was doing. There was something peculiarly terrifying in the animal's preoccupation.

At the center of the line, immediately before the main Cave-mouth--whose yawning entrance seemed to be the objective of the swarming beasts--A-ya was heading the battle, with the lame slave, Ook-ootsk, crouched fighting at her side like a colossal frog gone mad. Here the fires were almost extinguished--but the line of slain beasts formed a tolerable barricade, upon the top of which the women leapt, stabbing with their spears and screeching shrill taunts, while the old men leaned upon the gory pile to save their strength with frugal precision. Here and there among the carcases was the body of a woman or an old man, impaled on the horn of a bull or ripped open by the rending antler of an elk. As Grom and his men came shouting across the level a huge woolly rhinoceros plunged over the barrier, his b.l.o.o.d.y horn ploughing the carcases, trod down a couple of the defenders without appearing to see them, dashed through the nearest fire, and charged blindly into the Cave-mouth with his matted coat all ablaze. The children and old women who had not already fled down to the beach shrieked in horror. The frantic monster heeded them not at all, but went thundering on into the bowels of the cavern.

”Go back, all you women!” yelled Grom above the tumult, as he and his men raced to the barrier. ”Get down to the beach with the children.

We'll hold the rush back till you get down. Run! Run!”

Sobbing with the fury of the struggle, the women obeyed, darting back and pouncing upon their own little ones--all but A-ya, who remained doggedly at Grom's side.

”Go,” ordered Grom fiercely. ”The children need you. Get them all down.”

Sullenly the woman obeyed, seeing he was right, but still l.u.s.ting for the fight, though her wearied arm could now do little more than lift the spear.

Under the shock of these fresh fighters, with lionlike heads, masterful eyes, and smas.h.i.+ng, irresistible weapons, the front ranks of the animals recoiled, trampling those behind them; and for a few minutes the pressure was relieved. Grom turned to the old men.

”You go now,” he ordered.