In the Morning of Time Part 7

With a confident arrogance born of the knowledge that he was the lord of Fire, he deliberately chose to pursue this dreadful trail. And the girl, hiding her terror lest it should diminish her credit in his sight, followed close at his elbow, her bright eyes tirelessly searching the jungle on either side.

Suddenly behind them came a confused, terrifying noise of panting breaths and trampling feet. It came sweeping down the broad trail.

There were grunting cries, also; and Grom understood at once that a herd of pig-tapirs--heavy-footed, timorous beasts, as tall as heifers--were sweeping down upon them in mad flight before some unknown pursuer.

Against that blind panic, that headlong frantic rush, he knew that blazing brands would avail nothing. He clutched the girl by the hand.

"Come!" he ordered. And they fled side by side down the trail.

It was in their minds to climb the first suitable tree they should come to, and let the rout go by. In half a minute or so, over the tops of the giant gra.s.ses, they sighted such a tree, only a few hundred yards ahead. The trail, swerving opportunely, appeared to lead directly towards its foot, and they raced on, the girl now laughing softly with excitement, and forgetting her fear of the unknown because of the known peril behind her. It pleased her curiously to find that her man had not grown too divine to be ready to run away on fitting occasion; and she kept glancing at him from under her dark tangle of hair with eyes of pa.s.sionate possession.

The wild uproar behind was drawing nearer swiftly, but the refuge was now not more than fifty paces ahead. All at once the way to it was barred. Out from a little side-track on the right came lumbering a gigantic rhinoceros, his creased and folded hide clothed in matted brown wool and caked with clay. He swung round into the trail, almost blocking it with his bulk, stared for a couple of seconds with evil little eyes at the two slim beings before him, then lowered the huge double horn that armed his snout, and charged at them with a grunt of fury.

Caught thus fairly between the devil before, and the deep sea of trampling hoofs behind, Grom had no choice. A second's waving of the lighted brands convinced him that the rhinoceros was too dense of brain to fear the fire, or even to notice it. Once more clutching the girl's hand, he ran back a little way, seeking to draw the two perils together, and give them an opportunity to distract each other's attention.

He ran back till the flying, plunging herd of the pig-tapirs came into full view around the curve of the trail. Then, with all his strength, he forced his way into the gra.s.s, on the left, shouldering aside the upright stems to make room for the girl to enter. She hurled her blazing brand full into the face of the rhinoceros, hoping to confuse or divert him for an instant, then thrust herself lithely in past Grom.

The rhinoceros was diverted for an instant. The smoke and sparks half blinded him, and in a paroxysm of fury he checked himself to trample the strange a.s.sailant under foot. Then he thundered forward. But the tough stems of the gra.s.s had closed up again. The two fugitives were hidden. He saw the packed herd of the tapirs bearing down upon him; and, forgetting the insignificant creatures who had first roused his anger, he charged forward at full speed to meet this new foe.

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, Grom and the girl struggled breathlessly to force themselves to a safe distance lest they should be crushed in the melee.

The sweat ran down into their eyes, and swarms of tiny insects, breeding in the giant stems, choked their throats and nostrils; but they wrestled their way onward blindly, foot by foot. Behind them, out in the trail, came a ponderous crash, and, then an appalling explosion of squeals, screams, grunts and roars. The next instant the rigid stems gave way suddenly before them, and they fell forward, with a startled cry from the girl, into a deep and sunless water.

They came up, spluttering and choking; but as soon as she could catch breath the girl laughed, whereupon the grimness of Grom's face relaxed. The water was a deep creek, perfectly overshadowed and hidden by the rank growth along its banks. But just opposite was the tree whose refuge they had been trying to gain. They swam across in half-a-dozen strokes, and drew themselves ash.o.r.e, and shook themselves like a pair of retrievers. Through all the flight, the fierce effort among the gra.s.s-stems, and the unexpected ducking, they had kept tenacious hold of every one of their treasures. But--their fire was out! The brand was black; the precious tube, with the seeds of fire lurking at its heart, was drenched, saturated and lifeless.

For a moment or two Grom looked into the girl's eyes steadily, conveying to her without a word the whole tremendous significance of their loss. The girl responded, after a second's dismay, with a look of trust and adoration which brought a rush of warmth to Grom's heart.

He smiled proudly, and shook his club as if to rea.s.sure himself. Then, climbing hurriedly into the tree, they stared back over the plumed tops of the gra.s.ses.

The sight that met their eyes was not one for weak nerves. The spot in the gra.s.s which they had just escaped from was a shambles. The foremost of the panic-stricken pig-tapirs, met by the charge of the rhinoceros, had been ripped and split by the rooting of his double horn, and hurled to either side as if by some t.i.tanic plough. A couple more had been trampled down and crushed before his charge was stayed by the irresistible pressure of the surging, squealing ma.s.s.

There he had stood fast, like a jagged promontory in the surges, tossing his mighty head and thrusting hideously, while the rest of the herd pa.s.sed on, either scrambling clean over him or breaking down the canes and pouring around on either side. Of those that pa.s.sed over him about one in every three or four got ripped by the tossing horn, and went staggering forward a few paces, only to fall and be trodden out by their fellows. Close behind the last of the squealing fugitives came the cause of their panic--two immense black lions, who had apparently been playing with their prey like cats.

When they came face to face with the rhinoceros where he stood among his victims, shaking the blood from horn and head and shoulder, they stopped abruptly. Together, perhaps, they would have been a match for him. But theirs was a far higher intelligence than his. They knew the almost impenetrable toughness of his hide, his Berserk rage, his imperviousness to reasonable fear; and they had no care to engage themselves without cause in so uncertain and unprofitable a combat.

With a roar that rolled in thunder over the plain and seemed to set the very tree-tops quivering, they leaped lazily aside and went off in enormous bounds through the gra.s.s, circling about as if to intercept, in sheer wantonness of slaughter, the remnants of the fleeing herd. At the sight Grom frowned anxiously, thinking how helpless he and the girl would be against such foes, now that they no longer had the Shining One to protect them.

Squealing to split the ears, the pig-tapirs came galloping past the tree, making for a piece of water some furlongs further on, where doubtless they hoped to evade both the lion and the rhinoceros. But they had yet another adversary to reckon with.

Just past the tree, at a thicket of immense scarlet poinsettias, the trail curved sharply. From behind the poinsettias arose a gigantic shape unlike anything that Grom had ever dreamed of. And he knew that the maker of the mysterious trail and those tremendous footprints was before him.

With a trumpeting bray of indignation the monster sat upright on hind-quarters far more ponderous than those of a mammoth. Its tail, as thick at the base as the body of a bear, helped to support it, while its clumsy frame towered to a height of eighteen or twenty feet. Its hind legs were very short, thick like tree-trunks, grotesquely bowed; and its thighs like b.u.t.tresses. Its fore legs were more arms than legs, of startling length and ma.s.sive strength, draped in long, stiff hair, and terminated by colossal hands with immense hooked claws for fingers. The whole body was clothed with rusty hair of an amazing coa.r.s.eness, like matting fiber. The vast head, flat on top and prolonged to a snout that was almost a proboscis, had the look of being deformed by reason of its fantastically exaggerated jowl, or lower jaw. This terrifying monster thrust out a narrow pink tongue, some three or four feet in length, stooped and turned, and gave a hurried look at something crouching behind its mighty thighs.

"Its baby!" muttered the girl, with a little indrawn breath of sympathy.

Then the strange being sat up again to meet and ward off the rush of the maddened pig-tapirs.

For a moment it beat off the a.s.sault, seizing the frantic beasts and hurling them this way and that as if they had been so many rabbits.

Then it was completely surrounded by the reeking squealing bleeding horde, which paid no more personal attention to it than if it had been a ma.s.s of rock. They rolled over the little one, unheeding, and trod it flat. Its death cry split the air; and at that sound the mother seemed to sink down into her haunches. In her agony of rage and grief she literally tore some of her a.s.sailants in halves, throwing the awful fragments impatiently from her in order to lose no time in seizing a new victim. A few seconds more and the rush was past; and presently the mad rout was hurling itself with a tremendous splashing into the water. The monster looked around for more victims--and was just in time to see the hideous vision of the rhinoceros charging down upon her. Triumphant from the encounter with the lions, he rushed back to slake his still unsatisfied fury on the pig-tapirs. At any other time he would have given such an antagonist as the colossal megatherium a wide berth; but just now he was in one of his madnesses.

His furious little swinish eyes blinking through the blood which dripped over them, he hurled himself straight onward. His horn was plunged into the monster's paunch; but at the same time one of those gigantic armed hands fell irresistibly on his neck, shattering the vertebrae through all their deep protection of hide and muscle. He collapsed with an explosive grunt; and the giant hands tossed him aside.

It was a frightful wound which the monster had received, but for a few moments she paid no attention to it, being occupied in licking the trampled body of her young one with that amazing tongue of hers. At length, apparently convinced that the little one was quite dead, she brayed again piteously, dropping forward upon all fours, and made off slowly down the trail, walking with grotesque awkwardness on the sides of her feet. For two or three hundred yards she kept on, drawing a wake of crimson behind her; and then, apparently exhausted by her wound, she turned off among the canes, and lay down, close beside the trail, but effectively screened from it.

From their place in the tree Grom and the girl had followed breathlessly these astounding encounters. At last Grom spoke:

"This is a country of very great beasts," he remarked, with the air of one announcing a discovery. As A-ya showed no inclination whatever to dissent from this statement, he presently went on to his conclusion, leaving her to infer his minor premise.

"We must go back and recover the Shining One. It is not well for us to go on without him."

"Yes," agreed the girl eagerly. For all her courage and pa.s.sionate trust in her man, the sight of those black lions bounding over the tops of the towering gra.s.ses had somewhat shaken her nerve. She feared no beasts but the swiftest, and those which might leap into the lower branches of the trees. "Yes!" she repeated. "Let us go back for the Shining One, lest he be angry at us for having put him in the water."

"But for yet a day more we will stay here in this tree, and rest and sleep in safety," continued Grom, "that we may travel the more swiftly, till we get beyond the gra.s.ses."

Then, climbing higher into the tree, he proceeded to build a platform and roof of interlaced branches for their temporary home. In this task the girl did not help him, because of the great muscular strength which it required. She lay in a crotch, her hairy but long and shapely legs coiled under her like a leopard's, now gazing at her man with ardent eyes, now staring out apprehensively across the sun-drenched, perilous landscape.

Suddenly she gave a cry of amazement, and pointed excitedly down the trail. Beyond the water wherein the pig-tapirs had found refuge, beyond the lurking-place of the wounded megatherium, came three men, running desperately. Shading his eyes, Grom made out that they were nearly exhausted. They were clearly men of the type of his own tribe, light-skinned and well shaped; and the leader, who carried a long club, was a man of stature equal to his own. Grom's sympathies went out to them, and his impulse was to hasten to their a.s.sistance.

Glancing further along the trail to learn the cause of their headlong flight, he saw two black lions in pursuit, probably the same two which had been driving the pig-tapirs a couple of hours earlier. They were coming on at such a pace that Grom feared the weary fugitives would be overtaken before they could reach the tree of refuge. Instinctively he started to climb down. But, his eyes falling upon the girl, he remembered that he had no right to enter upon a venture so utterly hopeless while he had her to take care of. His eager clutch upon his spear relaxed.

"They are spent. They'll never get here!" he muttered anxiously.

"No!" said A-ya, with blank unconcern. "The lions will get them. It's Mawg, and his two cousins."

Grom growled an exclamation of astonishment. The girl's eyes--or her intuitions--were keener than his. But he saw at a second glance that she was right.

At this moment Mawg, running a few paces in advance by reason of his superior speed and stamina, pa.s.sed the spot where the wounded megatherium lay hidden. The monster lifted her dreadful head. The next second the other two arrived, running elbow to elbow, with drooped shoulders of exhaustion. Through the screen of canes a gigantic hand shot out above their heads and came down upon them, crushing the two together. They had not time for outcry; but it was clear that some sound caught the leader's ears, for he glanced back over his shoulder.

He was near enough now for the keen-eyed watchers in the tree to see his face change with horror. He ran on without a pause, but now with fresh speed, as if the sight had shocked him into new vigor. Seeing that there was, after all, a good prospect of his reaching the tree in time, Grom swung down to be ready to help him up. As he did so he saw the two lions approach the hiding-place of the monster.

The vast, clawed hand still lay there on the two crushed bodies in the middle of the trail. The lions saw it, and they checked themselves at a safe distance. They knew that just behind the gra.s.s-screen lurked another such s.h.a.ggy and monstrous member, waiting to rend them as they would rend an antelope. They shrank, and drew back, snarling angrily.

It is possible they feared lest the screen on either side of the trail might conceal more than one of the monsters; for they sprang far aside as if to make a wide circuit of the perilous spot.

"There's plenty of time!" muttered Grom, and dropped upon his feet in the middle of the trail. The girl came in mad haste after him, but at his sharp command "Stay there!" she contented herself with slipping out upon the lowest branch, just over his head, and holding her spear ready.

"Kill him!" she cried. But Grom seemed not to hear.

Staggering, and half blind with exhaustion Mawg was within twenty paces before he noticed who was confronting him. Then his dull eyes blazed. With a snarl of fury he hurled his club straight at Grom's face, missing him only by a hand's-breadth. But the effort, and the disappointment at finding himself thus balked, as he imagined, on the very threshold of escape, seemed to finish him. He stumbled on with groping hands outstretched, and fell just at Grom's feet.

Grom hesitated, wondering how he could get this inert weight up into the tree. The girl did not understand his hesitation.

"Kill him!" she hissed, leaning down eagerly from her branch overhead.

"No, he's a great warrior, and the tribe needs him," answered Grom, stooping to shake the prostrate form.

Mawg stirred, beginning to recover. Grom shook him again.

"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 Grom 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. Grom followed, quickly but coolly. A-ya, who had waited with her eyes watchfully on Mawg, stepped close to Grom's side; and all three swung upwards into the higher branches as the two lions arrived beneath.