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Updated: May 15, 2025
With a scream of warning to Grôm she rushed back to the cave. But Grôm did not hear her. He had been pulled down, struck senseless and buried under a writhing heap of foes. Her long hair streaming behind her, her eyes like those of a tigress protecting her cubs, A-ya darted to the cave-door. But she did not reach it. Just outside the threshold a club descended upon her head, and she dropped.
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 Grôm. "A-ya must have sent them, because the time has come. Let us wait for the young girl, who seems to bring a message."
With derisive gestures they swung themselves out upon the overhanging branches, till it almost seemed as if they would hurl themselves into the water in their rage against the little knot of human beings. The girl A-ya, overcome with loathing horror because the beasts were so hideous a caricature of man, covered her eyes with one hand.
The uses of a whip came to him by unerring insight, and he began applying it to his mother's shoulders. The novelty of it delighted them both. A-ya, moreover, chuckled slyly at the thought that the procedure might, on some future occasion, be reversed, not without advantage to the cause of discipline.
Hardly noticing, or not heeding if he noticed that the tribe offered no vociferous welcome, and seemed sullenly surprised at his appearance, Grôm strode straight to the Chief, whom he saw sitting on the judgment stone, and threw down spear and club at his feet in sign of fealty. But A-ya, following, was keen to note the hostile attitude of the tribe.
The shoal swept out over the lake a little way, and then down the shore toward the left; and Grôm drew a long breath as he assured himself that their course was taking them far from the fires of A-ya and Mô. When Grôm lowered his eyes to earth again he started.
And those of the tribe who had been hoping to do honor to the Shining One, as well as to the spirits of their slain kinsmen back in the barrow on the windy hills, by a great and bloody sacrifice, began to realize with discontent that their hopes were like enough to be disappointed. The captive said his name was Ook-ootsk a clicking guttural which none but A-ya was able to master.
That the little, bright things could bite terribly they had evidence enough, both in the charred and corroded wood which the flames had licked, and in the angry wounds of Ne-boo. At the same time they saw their Chief and Grôm apparently handling the Terror with impunity, and the girl A-ya approaching it and serving it freely, though always with bowed head and every mark of awe.
But Grôm and A-ya, Mô and Loob triumphant in spite of their wounds, were by this time far away among the inland thickets, where those intolerable eyes could not search them out, nor the clashing wings pursue. From the topmost summit of that range of pointed hills which held the caves and the cave-mouth fires of his people, Grôm stared northward with keen curiosity.
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