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Having fully recovered, Grôm and A-ya swung down, with loathing, into the pink gloom, fled through it almost without drawing breath, and found themselves once more in the rank green shadows of the jungle. They went on till they came to a thicket of plantains. Then, loading themselves with ripe fruit, they climbed high into a tree, and wove themselves a safe resting-place among the branches.
A-ya, no longer needed at the fires, was just about to follow Grôm down into the thick of the reeking battle, when a scream from the cave-mouth made her whip round. She was just in time to see Ook-ootsk hurl his spear at the tall figure of Mawg, leaping down upon him from the broken slope on the left. A half score of the Bow-legs were following hard upon Mawg's heels.
Once there came a scratching of claws and a sniffing at the base of the tree. But Grôm dropped a live coal from his fire-basket, and chanced to make a lucky shot. With a snarl some heavy body bounced away from the tree. The coal then fell into a tuft of dry grass, which flared up suddenly. Grôm had a glimpse of huge shapes and startled, savage eyes backing away from the circle of light.
Refreshed by their few hours' sleep in the vital warmth, Grôm and the girl stood erect in the flooding light and scanned the strange landscape. Grôm's sagacious eyes noted the fertility of the level lands at a distance from the fire, and of the clefts, ledges and lower slopes of the tumbled volcanic hills. Here and there he made out the openings of caves, half overgrown with vines and bush.
It was toward this point, where the water washed the steep-shouldered promontory, that Grôm decided to shape his course across the plain. By the time the sun was some three hours high they had arrived within a couple of hundred yards of the open.
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.
Realizing well enough that in three or four seconds more the crash would come, and that the struggle between the rhinoceros and the maddened herd would be little short of a cataclysm, Grôm and the girl struggled breathlessly to force themselves to a safe distance lest they should be crushed in the mêlée.
But they had not gone a dozen strides when the slope quivered, and heaved upwards shudderingly beneath them; and they all fell forward flat upon their faces. From all but Grôm there went up a shriek so piercing that in their own ears it disguised the stupendous rending roar which at that moment seemed to stun the air.
Grôm piled on more grass, shouted arrogantly, and rushed at the beast with a blazing handful. It was a light and harmless flame, almost instantly extinguished. But it was too mysterious for the monster to face. Grôm was wise enough not to follow up his victory. Returning to the fire he fed it to a safe volume.
Toward Grôm who regarded him altogether impersonally as a means to an end, a pawn to be played prudently in a game of vast import his attitude was that of the submitted slave, his fate lying in the hollow of his master's hand. Toward the rest of the tribe who, till their curiosity was sated, kept crowding in to stare and jeer and curse he displayed the savage fear and hate of a lynx at bay.
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