In the Morning of Time Part 11

The Chief, clapping one hairy hand over his wounded eye, glared after the fugitive with the other. But he knew the folly of trying to catch his fleet-footed adversary, and after a moment he dismissed him from his mind. With a grunt he stepped down from his rock, and heedless of his wound, strode over to the girl. Through all the tumult she had never lifted her head from between her knees, or shown the least sign of concern. The Chief seized her by the shoulder and shook her roughly, ordering her to come with him. She did not understand his language, but his meaning was obvious. She looked up and stared straight into his one open eye. In her own eyes shifted the dangerous, lambent flame of a beast at bay, and for a moment she was on the point of darting at his throat.

But not without reason was the Black Chief dictator of the Bow-legs.

Brutal and filthy though he was, and hideous beyond description, and horrible with his gashed face and the blood pouring down over his huge and s.h.a.ggy chest, he was all a man, and the mastery in him checked her. She felt the hopelessness of fighting her fate. The flame flickered out, leaving her eyes dull and leaden. She rose listlessly, and followed her new lord to the tree in which he had his dwelling of woven branches.

At the foot of the tree the Black Chief stopped, stood back, and signed the girl to ascend. A climber as expert as himself, she clutched the rough trunk with accustomed hands. Then she hesitated, and shut her eyes. Should she obey, yielding to her fate? Mawg, her late captor, she had hated with a murderous hate; yet she had submitted to him, in a dim way biding her time for vengeance. He was of her own race; and it was in her mind, her spirit--though she herself could not so a.n.a.lyze the emotion--that she hated him. But this new master was an alien, and of a lower, beastlier type. Toward him she felt a sick bodily repulsion. Behind her tight-shut lids the dark went red. She stood rigid and quivering, stormed through by a raging impulse to tear out either his throat or her own. She was herself a more advanced product of her own advanced race, and urged by impulses still new and imperfectly applied to life. But the countless centuries of submission were in her blood also; and they whispered to her insidiously that she was lawful prey. A huge hand fell significantly upon the back of her neck. She jumped, gave a sobbing cry, and sprang up into the tree. Who was she to challenge doom for an idea, a hundred thousand years before her time.

Some days' journey to the westward of the swampy refuge of the Bow-legs, a tall hunter was making his way warily through the forest.

His color, his build, and his swift grace of movement proclaimed him of the same race as Mawg and the girl A-ya, acquitting him easily of any kinship with the People of the Trees. In height and weight he was much like Mawg, but lighter in complexion, somewhat less hairy, and of a frank, sagacious countenance. His eyes were of a blue-gray, calm and piercing, yet with a look in them as of one who broods on mysteries.

He was obviously much older than Mawg, his long, thick hair and short, close-curling beard being liberally touched with gray. He carried in one hand a peculiar long-handled club, which he had fashioned by lashing, with strips of green hide, a split and jagged flint-stone into the cleft head of a stick. In the other hand he bore two long, slender spears, their tips hardened and pointed in fire.

On the day, now many weeks back, when Grom set out from the Caves behind the Fire to seek for A-ya in the far-off country of the Bow-legs, he had carried also two hollow tubes of green bark, with the seeds of fire, kept smouldering in a bed of punk, hidden in the hearts of them. But the need of stopping frequently to build a fire and renew the vitality of the secret spark had soon exasperated his impatient spirit. Intolerant of the hindrance, and confident in his own strength and craft, he had thrown the fire-tubes away and fallen back upon the weapons which had sufficed him before his discovery and conquest of the Shining One.

Engrossed in his purpose, thinking only of regaining possession of the girl, the mother of his man-child, he shunned all contest with the great beasts which crossed his path, and fled without shame from those which undertook to hunt him.

He would risk no doubtful battle. He satisfied his hunger on wild honey, and the ripe fruits and tubers with which the forest abounded at this season. At night he made his nest, of hurriedly woven branches, in the highest swaying of the tree-tops, where not even the leopard, cunning climber though she was, could come at him without giving timely warning. And so, doggedly and swiftly making his way due east, he came at length to the fringes of that vast region of swampy meres and fruitful, rankly wooded islets which was occupied by the Bow-legs.

Here he had need of all that wood-craft which had so often enabled him to stalk even the wary antelope. The light color of his skin being a betrayal, he rubbed himself with clayey ooze till he was of the same hue as the Bow-legs. Crawling through the undergrowth at dusk as soundlessly as a snake, or swinging along smoothly through the branches like a gray ape in the first confusing glimmer of the dawn, he made short incursions among the outlying colonies, but could find no sign of the girl, or Mawg, in whose hands he imagined her still to be. But working warily around the outskirts of the tribe, to northward, he came at last upon the stale but unmistakable trail of a flight and a pursuit. This he followed up till the pursuit came stragglingly to an end, and the trail of the fugitive stood out alone and distinct. 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.

Grom sat down in sudden despair. If Mawg, who at least was no coward, had fled alone, then surely the girl was dead. Grom's club and his spears dropped from his nerveless hands. His interest in life sank into a sick indifference, a dull anguish which he did not even try to understand. It was well for him that no prowling beast came by in that moment of his unseeing weakness. Then a new thought came to him, and his despair flamed into rage. He leapt to his feet, clutching at his s.h.a.ggy beard. The girl had been seized, without doubt, by the great Black Chief. The thought of this defilement to his woman, the mother of his man-child, drove him quite mad for the moment. s.n.a.t.c.hing up his weapons, he roared with anguish, and ran blindly forward along the trampled trail, ready to hurl himself upon the whole loathsome tribe.

A gigantic leopard, crouching in a thicket of scarlet poinsettia beside the trail, made as if to pounce upon him as he went by--but shrank back, instead, with flattened ears, daunted by his fury.

But presently the madness burned itself out. As sanity returned he checked his rush, glanced once more watchfully about him, and at length stepped furtively into the thick of the jungle. Now more than ever was his coolest craft demanded, that A-ya might be plucked from the monster's arms.

Following up the plain clue of that tremendous pursuit, Grom worked his way deep into the Bow-legs' country. With all his craft and his lynx-like stealth, it was at times hair-raising work. Not only the ground thickets, but the tree-tops as well, were swarming with his keen-eyed foes. He had to worm his way between swamp-sodden roots, and sometimes lie moveless as a stone for hours, enduring the stings of a million insects. Sometimes, not daring to lift his head to look about him, he had to trust to his ears and his hound-like sense of smell for information as to what was going on. And sometimes it was only his tireless immobility that saved him from the stroke of a startled adder or a questioning and indignant crotalus. After long swaying, poised for the death-stroke, the serpent would decide that the menacing thing before it was not alive. It would slowly dissolve its tense coils, and glide away; and Grom would resume his shadowy progress.

Then, about sunrise (for the Bow-legs, like the birds, were early risers) of the second day after the discovery of Mawg's footprints, the patient hunter's eyes fell upon A-ya. He had crept in to within a hundred yards or so of the Council Rock, which was surrounded by a horde of the Bow-legs. Crouching low as he was, in a dense thicket, Grom's view was limited; but he could see, over the heads of the listening mob, the Black Chief seated on the rock, his ragged club in his hand. He was haranguing his warriors in rapid clicks and gutturals, which conveyed no meaning to Grom's ear. The harangue came soon to an end. The Chief stood up. The b.e.s.t.i.a.l crowd parted--and through the opening Grom saw A-ya, crouched, with her hair over her knees, at the Chief's feet. Stepping down from the rock, the Chief seized her by the wrist and dragged her upright. She took her place at his heels, dejectedly, like a whipped dog. Grom, from within his thicket, ground his teeth, and with difficulty held himself in leash.

Surrounded as A-ya was, at that moment, by the hordes of her captors, any attempt at her rescue would have been hopeless folly.

There was something going on among the bow-legged mob which Grom, from his hiding-place could not at first make out. Then he saw that the Chief was trying to instruct his powerful but clumsy followers in the handling of the club and spear. Having been taught by the white renegade, Mawg, the Chief used his ma.s.sive club with skill, but he was still clumsy and absurdly inaccurate in throwing the spear. After he had split the face of one of his followers by a misdirected cast, he gave up the spear-throwing, turned to the girl, and ordered her to teach this art of her people. It was obvious that the mob had vast confidence in her powers, as one of superior race, although a mere woman, for they opened out at once on two sides to leave room for the expected display. The heart of the watcher in the thicket began to thump as he saw a way clearing itself between his hiding-place and the wild-haired woman he loved.

A-ya affected to misunderstand the Chief's orders. She took the spear, but stood holding it in stupid dejection. The Chief threatened her angrily, but she paid no attention. At this moment the whistling cry of a plover sounded from the thicket. The girl straightened herself and every muscle grew tense. The melancholy cry came again. It was a strange place for a plover to lurk in, that rank thicket of jungle; but the Bow-legs took no notice of the incongruity. Upon the girl, however, the effect of the cry was magical. She gave no glance toward the thicket, but suddenly, smilingly, she seemed to understand the orders of the Chief. Poising the rude spear at the height of her shoulder, she pointed to a huge, whitish fungus which grew upon a tree-root some sixty or seventy feet away. With a flexing of her whole lithe body--as Grom had taught her--she made her throw. The white fungus was split in halves.

With a hoa.r.s.e clamor of admiration, the mob surged forward to examine the fragments. Even the Chief, though disdaining to show the interest of his followers, took a stride or two in the same direction. For a second his back was turned. In that second, the girl fled, light and swift as a deer, speeding toward the thicket whence the cry of the plover had sounded. Her long bushy hair streamed out behind her as she ran.

With a bellow of wrath, the Black Chief, the whole mob at his heels, came pounding after her. The next instant, out from the thicket leapt Grom, a towering figure, and stood with spear uplifted. Like a lion at bay, he glanced swiftly this way and that, balancing the chances of battle and escape, while he menaced the foes immediately confronting him.

At this amazing apparition, the mob paused irresolute; but the Black Chief came on like a mad buffalo. Grom hurled one of his two spears.

He hurled it with a loathing fury; but he was compelled to throw high, to clear A-ya's head. The Chief saw it coming, and cunningly flung himself forward on his face. The weapon hurtled on viciously, and pierced the squat body of one of the waverers a dozen paces behind. At his yell of agony the mob woke up, and came on again with guttural, barking cries. But already Grom and the girl, side by side, were fleeing down an open glade to the left, toward a breadth of still water which they saw gleaming through the trunks. Grom knew that the way behind him was swarming with the enemy. He had seen that there was no chance of getting through the hordes in front and to the right. But in this direction there were only a few knots of s.h.a.ggy women, who shrank in terror at his approach; and he gambled on the chance of the bow-legged men having no great skill in the water.

All the Folk of the Caves could swim like otters, and both Grom and the girl were expert beyond their fellows. The water before them was some three or four hundred yards in width. They did not know whether it was a sluggish fenland river, or the arm of a lake; but, heedless of the peril of crocodiles and water-snakes they plunged in, and with long powerful side-strokes went surging across toward the opposite sh.o.r.e. They had a clear start of thirty or forty yards, and their pace in the water was tremendous. Some heavy splashes in the water behind them showed how the clumsy missiles of their foes--ragged clubs and fragments of broken branches--were falling short; and they looked back derisively.

The bow-legged, s.h.a.ggy men with their wide, red, skyward nostrils were ranged along the sh.o.r.e, and the Chief was fiercely urging them into the water. They shrank back in horror at the prospect--which, indeed, seemed little to the taste of the Chief himself. Presently he seized the two nearest by their matted manes, and flung them headlong in.

With yells of terror they scrambled out again, and scurried off to the rear like half-drowned hens.

The Chief screeched an order. Straightway the mob divided. One part went racing clumsily up the sh.o.r.e to the left, the other followed the Chief along through the rank sedge-growth to the right--the Chief, by reason of his superior stature and length of leg, rapidly opening up his lead.

"It's nothing but a pond," said Grom, in disgust, "and they're coming round the sh.o.r.e to head us off."

But the girl, her hair trailing darkly on the water behind her, only laughed. She was free at last. And she was with her man.

Suddenly Grom felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the calf of his leg. With a cry, he looked back, expecting to see a water-snake gliding off. He saw nothing. But in the next instant another stab came in the other leg. Then A-ya screamed: "They're biting me all over." A dozen stinging punctures distributed themselves all at once over Grom's body. Then he understood that their a.s.sailants were not water-snakes.

"Quick! To sh.o.r.e!" he ordered. Throwing all their strength into a breath-sapping, over-hand roll, they shot forward, gained the weedy shallows, and scrambled ash.o.r.e. Their bodies were hung thickly with gigantic leeches.

Heedless of the wounds and the drench of blood, they tore off their loathsome a.s.sailants. Then, after a few seconds' halt to regain breath and decide on their direction, they started northwestward at a rapid, swinging lope, through a region of open, gra.s.sy glades set with thickets of giant fern and mimosa.

They had run on at this free pace for a matter of half-an-hour or more, and were beginning to flatter themselves that they had shaken off their pursuers, when almost directly ahead of them, to the right, appeared the Black Chief, lumbering down upon them. Nearly half-a-mile behind, between the mimosa clumps, could be seen the mob of his followers straggling up to his support. He yelled a furious challenge, swung up his great club, and charged upon Grom. Waving A-ya behind him, Grom strode forward, accepting the challenge.

As man to man, the rivals looked not unfairly matched. The fair-skinned Man of the Caves was the taller by half a head, but obviously the lighter in weight by a full stone, if not more. His long, straight, powerfully muscled legs had not the ma.s.sive strength of his bow-legged adversary's. He was even slim, by comparison, in hip and waist. But in chest, arms and shoulders his development was finer. Physically, it seemed a matter of the lion against the bear.

To Grom there was one thing almost as vital, in that moment, as the rescue of his woman. This was the slaking of his l.u.s.t of hate against the filthy beast-man who had held that woman captive. Fading ancestral instincts flamed into new life within him. His impulse was to fling down spear and club, to fall upon his rival with bare, throttling hands and rending teeth. But his will, and his realization of all that hung upon the outcome, held this madness in check.

Silent and motionless, poised lightly and gathered as if for a spring, Grom waited till his adversary was within some thirty paces of him.

Then, with deadly force and sure aim, he hurled his one remaining spear. But he had not counted on the lightning accuracy, swifter than thought itself, with which the men of the trees used their huge hands.

The Black Chief caught the spear-head within a few inches of his body.

With a roar of rage he snapped the tough shaft like a parsnip stalk, and threw the pieces aside. Even as he did so, Grom, still voiceless and noiseless, was upon him.

Had the vicious swing of Grom's flint-headed club found its mark, the battle would have been over. But the Black Chief, for all his bulk, was quick as an eel. He bowed himself to the earth, so that the stroke whistled idly over him, and in the next second he swung a vicious, short blow upwards. It was well-aimed, at the small of Grom's back.

But the latter, feeling himself over-balanced by his own ineffective violence, leapt far out of reach before turning to see what had happened. The Chief recovered himself, and the two lashed out at each other so exactly together that the great clubs met in mid-air. So shattering was the force of the impact, so numbing the shock to the hairy wrists behind it, that both weapons dropped to the ground.

Neither antagonist dared stoop to s.n.a.t.c.h them up. For several seconds they stood glaring at each other, their breath hissing through clenched teeth, their knotted fingers opening and shutting. Then they sprang at each other's throats--Grom in silence, the Black Chief snarling hoa.r.s.ely. Neither, however, gained the fatal grip at which he aimed. They found themselves in a fair clinch, and stood swaying, straining, sweating, and grunting, so equally matched in sheer strength that to A-ya, standing breathless with suspense, the dreadful seconds seemed to drag themselves out to hours. Then Grom, amazed to find that in brute force he had met his match, feigned to give way.

Loosing the clutch of one arm, he dropped upon his knees. With a grunt of triumph the Black Chief crashed down upon him, only to find himself clutched by the legs and hurled clean over his wily adversary's head.

Before he could recover himself, Grom was upon him, pinning him to the earth and reaching for his throat. In desperation he set his huge ape teeth, with the grip of a bull-dog, deep into the muscular base of Grom's neck, and began working his way in toward the artery.

At this moment A-ya glanced about her. She saw two bodies of the Bow-legs closing in upon them from either side--the nearest not much more than a couple of hundred yards distant. Her lord had plainly ordered her to stand aside from this combat, but this was no time for obedience. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the sharpened fragment of the broken spear.

Gripping it with both hands she drove it with all her force into the side of the Black Chief's throat, and left it there. With a hideous cough his grip relaxed. His limbs straightened out stiffly, and he lay quivering.

Covered with blood, Grom 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.

Without a word Grom s.n.a.t.c.hed up his club, wrenched the broken spear from his dead rival's neck, thrust it into the girl's hands, and darted for the narrowing s.p.a.ce of open between the two converging mobs.

With their greatly superior speed it was obvious that the two fugitives might reasonably expect to win through. They were surprised, therefore, at the note of triumph in the furious cries of the Bow-legs. A few hundred yards ahead the comparatively open country came to an end, and its place was taken by a belt of splendid crimson bloom, extending to right and left as far as the eye could see. It was a jungle of shrubs some twenty feet high, with scanty, pale-green leaves almost hidden by their exuberance of blossom. But jungle though it was, Grom's sagacious eyes decided that it was by no means dense enough to seriously hinder their flight. When they reached it, the jabbering hordes were almost upon them. But, with mocking laughter, they slipped through, and plunged in among the gray stems, beneath the overshadowed rosy glow. Their pursuers yelled wildly--it seemed to Grom a yell of exultation--but they halted abruptly at the edge of the rosy barrier and made no attempt to follow.

"They know they can't catch us," said Grom, slackening his pace. But the girl, puzzled by this sudden stopping of the pursuit, felt uneasy and made no reply.

Loping onward at moderate pace through the enchanting pink light, which filtered down about them through the ma.s.sed bloom overhead, they presently became conscious of an oppressive silence. The cries of their pursuers having died away behind them, there was now nothing but the soft thud of their own footfalls to relieve the anxious intentness of their ears. Not a bird-note, not the flutter of a wing, not the hum or the darting of a single insect, disturbed the strangely heavy air.

No snake or lizard or squeaking mouse scurried among the fallen leaves. They wondered greatly at such stillness. Then they wondered at the absence of small undergrowth, the lack of other shrubs and trees such as were wont to grow together in the warm jungle. Nothing anywhere about them but the endless gray stems and pallid slim leaves of the oleander, with their rose-red roof of blossom.

Presently they felt a lethargy creeping over their limbs, which began to grow heavy; and a dull pain came throbbing behind their eyes. Then understanding of those cries of triumph flashed into Grom's mind. He stopped and clutched the girl by the wrist. "It is poison here. It is death," he muttered. "That's why they shouted."

"Yes, everything is dead but the red flowers," whispered A-ya, and clung to him, shuddering with awe.

"Courage!" cried Grom, lifting his head and dashing his great hand across his eyes. "We _must_ get through. We _must_ find air."