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Updated: June 16, 2025
Here he found that half the little ones had been killed in that swift incursion of Mawg, and that nearly all the old men and women had been slaughtered in defending their charges. Across Grôm's doorway, crouching on his face and with his great teeth buried in the throat of a dead Bow-leg, lay the lame captive, Ook-ootsk.
Their eyes were wide as they told of the countless myriads of the Bow-legs who were pouring into the head of the valley, led by Mawg and a gigantic black-faced chief as tall as Bawr himself. "Are they as many," asked Grôm, "as they who came against us in the Little Hills?" But the panting men threw up their hands. "As a swarm of locusts to a flock of starlings," they replied.
The crawling figure of Mawg was still a good hundred paces from the unsuspecting Grôm, when the great bird overtook it. A-ya, watching from her tree-top, clutched a branch and held her breath. Mawg's ears caught a sound behind him, and he glanced around sharply. With a scream, he bounded to his feet. But it was too late.
"Of course, he wants you," said Grôm, wondering, as he spoke, at the ring of his own voice. "You are the fairest thing, and the most desirable, on earth. All men whose eyes come to rest on you must want you. But none shall have you, ever, for you are mine, and none shall tear you from me." And at that the girl forgot her anger, and forgave him for having neglected to kill Mawg.
One clear footprint in the wet earth revealed itself clearly as Mawg's for there was no such thing as confounding that arched and moulded imprint with those left by the apish men. Feverishly the hunter cast about for another trail, smaller and slimmer. Forward he searched for it, and then back among the trampings of the pursuers. But in vain. Clearly Mawg had been the sole fugitive.
"He deserts us in our need. Let him not go, Chief!" A growl of protest went up from his hearers. The girl faced round upon him with blazing eyes. Grôm gave him an indifferent glance, and turned away, half smiling. The Chief struck the rock with his club, and said coldly: "Mawg is young, and his words are foolish. Grôm is a true man. He shall do as he will."
"Up into the tree, quick!" he ordered in a loud, sharp voice. "The lions are coming." Mawg roused himself, sat up, and stared with a look of bewilderment changing swiftly into hate. "Up!" shouted Grôm again. "The tree. They're coming!" At this the fellow growled, but sprang up as if he had been jabbed with a spear, and clambered into the tree as nimbly as a monkey.
She could see Grôm wandering from plantain clump to plantain clump, seeking fruit ripe enough to be palatable. And then, with a shiver of hate and dread, she saw the dark form of Mawg, creeping noiselessly on Grôm's trail, and not more than a couple of hundred paces behind him.
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.
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.
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