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Updated: June 15, 2025
Grôm looked behind him, and saw the last of the women and children, shepherded vehemently by A-ya with the butt of her spear, vanishing down the steep toward the beach. "It is time for us to go too," shouted Grôm, clutching the lame slave by the arm to drag him off. But Ook-ootsk wrenched himself free.
The younger women, coming up behind the warriors, were derisive. They were always critical in their attitude towards A-ya so far as they dared to be and now they ran forward to scold and slap their respective children for putting this disgusting burnt meat into their mouths.
As he burst forth into the glade of refuge, he saw A-ya and young Mô leaping about frantically among their fires, now trying to stir the fires to a fiercer blaze, now beating upwards with their spears, while above them darted and gleamed and swooped and scintillated, with a horrid dry rustling of their silver wings, shoal upon shoal of the devouring monsters.
With furious words and blows he tried to make the tribe scatter to right and left, so as to spread the pressure as widely as possible. Perceiving his purpose, A-ya and Loob, and several of the leading warriors, seconded his efforts with frantic vehemence; till in a few minutes the whole tribe, amazed and quaking with awe, was extended like a fan over a front of three or four hundred yards.
Having thought this out, he drew a deep breath, looked up, and met A-ya's eyes with a smile. His eager desire now was to get back home and put his new scheme into execution. "Where are we going now?" asked A-ya. Grôm looked about him wildly at the sky, at the far-off hills on their right, at the course of the stream, which had changed within the past few miles. His sense of direction was unerring.
In its folly, it now forgot its other enemies, and fell to wreaking its madness on the lifeless victim. But in another second or two it was fairly overwhelmed with the red brands descending upon its head. A-ya, with all the force of her strong young arms, drove her short spear half-way through its loins.
There was no wind, and the surface shone like clear glass. But once and again his eyes were dazzled by a dart of intense radiance, a great flash of rose or violet or blue-green flame, shooting over the surface of the water. A memory of what A-ya had professed to gather from the stranger woman rushed into his mind.
Covered with blood, Grôm sprang to his feet, and turned angrily upon A-ya. "I would have killed him," he said, coldly. "There was no time," answered the girl, and pointed to the advancing hordes.
"It was hardly worth while wasting arrows, you see?" said Grôm, standing erect on the raft and watching the scene with brooding interest. "Do you suppose those swimming beasts with the great jaws can get at us here?" demanded A-ya with a shudder. "While this thing that carries us holds together, I think we can fight them off," replied Grôm.
Then search was made for Grôm. At first the Chief imagined that he had followed the captors of A-ya, in a desperate hope of effecting her rescue alone. But they found him under a heap of dead, so nearly dead himself that they despaired of him.
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