Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
Grôm, looking back over his shoulder, realized that their pursuers were now gaining upon them appreciably. With an effort he quickened his pace still further. Loob responded without difficulty. But A-ya's face showed signs of distress, and at this Grôm's heart sank. He began to scan the water, weighing the chances of the crocodiles. It looked as if they were trapped beyond escape.
A-ya's next shot missed; and then, screaming for the old men to come into the fray, she snatched up her stone-headed spear and ran around behind the nearest fire, expecting the bears to follow her and be led away from the hiding-place of the children. But she had forgotten that the slave, Ook-ootsk, with his twisted and shrunken leg, could not run.
The adoration which soon grew up in his heart for A-ya's beauty, but which his awe of her did not suffer him even to realize to himself, was turned upon the babe, and speedily took the form of a passionate and dog-like devotion. A-ya, with her mother instinct, was quick to understand this, and also to realize the possible value to her child of such a devotion, in some future emergency.
As a matter of fact, there was little of it actually consumed by the fire, but it was amazingly shredded by the clawing of the blinded bear; and an odor of roasted venison steamed up from it, which seemed rather pleasant to A-ya's nostrils.
Grôm just eluded the strange attack by stepping aside nimbly; and quick as thought A-ya's spear slashed the dreadful red tongue as it reached flickering after her lord's ankles. The next moment, seeing the monster's throat upstretched and unguarded, Grôm drove his spear full force, straight into the soft hollow of it.
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."
But the babe on A-ya's arm seemed to him something peculiarly precious. It was not only the son of Grôm, his grave and distant master, but also of that wonderful, beautiful, enigmatic deity, his mistress, the fashioner and controller of the flames.
The giant Ook-ootsk, hideous with his ape-like forehead, his upturned, flaring nostrils, his protruding jaw, his shaggy, clay-colored torso, and his short, massive, grotesquely bowed legs of which one was twisted so that the toes pointed almost backwards lay sprawling and chuckling benevolently near the entrance, while a swarm of little ones, A-ya's two among them, clambered over him.
But the lame Ook-ootsk, squatting misshapen in Grôm's doorway with A-ya's baby in his ape-like arms grew more and more anxious. As he conveyed to Grôm, the longer the delay the greater the force which was being gathered for the assault.
But the words were hardly out of his throat, when his guess was proved wrong. Around the turn came lumbering, with huge heads hung low and slavering, half-open jaws a pair of those colossal red bears of the caves which had always been A-ya's peculiar terror. "Hide the children!" she yelled, and then let fly an arrow, almost without aim, at the foremost of the monsters.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking