United States or Ecuador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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 Grôm, his brain keen in every emergency, stopped him. "Keep off!" he ordered.
He took also A-ya's young brother, the hot-head Mô; and Loob, the shaggy, little sharp-faced scout, who could run like a hare, hide like a fox, and fight like a cornered weasel. This he would have accounted, ordinarily, a sufficient party.
His convulsed face stared upward for an instant, and then, with a choked scream, he was dragged under. He disappeared in a swirl of pale blue, frantically waving claws, and eyes, and feelers, and black-fringed, chopping mouths. Beside himself with rage and horror, Grôm stabbed down wildly into the whirling struggle, and his example was followed at once by Loob and young Mô.
At the sound of her scream, Grôm was back at her side in two leaps, his hair and beard bristling stiffly, his eyes blazing with rage. But there was no assailant 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.
In the center of an open glade, not far from the skeleton, Grôm set his party to building a circle of fires, as likely to afford the surest kind of a refuge. A supply of fuel having been gathered, he directed A-ya and Mô to remain and tend the fires and not to leave the circle unless he should summon them. Loob, the cunning scout, he sent off to the left through the underbrush.
And in this way they began once more to approach the other bank. The process, however, was slow; and Grôm presently concluded that it was wasteful. He hit upon the idea of setting A-ya and Loob together to stroking with their spears on one side, while he, with his great strength, balanced their effort on the other.
The raging brutes were not more than a dozen paces behind, when Grôm led the way out upon the floating mass, picking his steps warily and leaping from trunk to trunk. Loob and A-ya followed with like care. Certain of the trunks gave and sank beneath their feet, but their feet were already away to surer footing.
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 Grôm nor A-ya, nor the unsleeping Loob had lost sight of the object of their journey.
Life had been running uneventfully for months at the Great Caves, and Grôm's restless spirit was craving new knowledge, new adventure. On this quest of the arrow Grôm took with him only two companions his slim, swift-footed mate, A-ya and that cunning little scout, Loob, the Hairy One. For the space of three days they journeyed due west from the Caves.
He paused, however, to transfix upon his spear-head one of their wounded but still fluttering foes, that he might be able to show the tribe what manner of monsters they had had to deal with. Both A-ya and Mô followed his example; and they all ran off down the glade searching for Loob, whom they soon found and bearing their strange trophies on their spear-heads they went on.
Word Of The Day