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Updated: June 15, 2025
Glancing quickly over his shoulder to see if A-ya had noticed the incident, he observed that her face was buried between her knees and quite hidden by her hair. But her shoulders were heaving spasmodically. He suspected that she was laughing at him; and for a moment, as his knuckle was aching fiercely, he considered the advisability of giving her a beating.
He could not long relinquish himself to the blind whim and chance of the current. Just as he was beginning to grapple with this problem, A-ya anticipated his thought as he had noticed that she often did. Looking up at him through her tossed hair, she enquired where they were going. "I am just trying to think," he answered, "how to make this thing take us where we want to go."
"What is it?" she whispered, staring at the unstable surface in a kind of horror. Before he could reply, cries and shouts arose among the tribe behind him, and they all rushed forward, almost sweeping Grôm and A-ya from their feet.
At the head of the narrow path leading up from the lower cave were stationed half a dozen women, similarly armed. Bawr had chosen these women because each of them had one or more young children in the cave behind her; and he knew that no adventurous foe would get up that path alive. But A-ya was not among these six wild mothers, for her place was at the service of the fires.
He took A-ya, not only because of her oft-proved courage and resourcefulness, not only because he wanted her always at his side, but, above all, because he knew he could not leave her behind. Had he tried to leave her, she would have disobeyed and followed him by stealth and perhaps fallen a prey to prowling beasts.
A long, raking wound ran scarlet down one flank. Staggering from weariness or loss of blood, it came on straight toward the cave-mouth, so blinded by its terror that it seemed not to see the human creatures awaiting it, or even the fires before them. A-ya fetched a deep breath of relief when she saw that this was no ravening monster. Her immediate thought was the hunter's thought.
And Mawg, seeing here his opportunity both for vengeance on Grôm and for the gratification of that mad passion for A-ya which had so long obsessed him, had gone about the business with shrewd foresight and a convincing zeal.
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 Grôm's side. "Go," ordered Grôm fiercely. "The children need you. Get them all down." Sullenly the woman obeyed, seeing he was right, but still lusting for the fight, though her wearied arm could now do little more than lift the spear.
And A-ya, standing a little apart with Grôm, smiled with comprehending sarcasm at their conversion. For the next few hours the fires were surrounded each by a seething and squabbling mob, the innermost rings engaged in toasting their collops with one hand, while with the other they tried to shield their faces from the heat.
A-ya took the correction submissively, but held her own thought; and when a day or two later, events proved her to have been right, she discreetly refrained from calling her lord's attention to the fact a point upon which Grôm was equally reserved. With so provocative a mystery waiting to be solved, Grôm could not long rest idle.
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