"And leave your man—the loveliest, kindest, cleverest, wisest, best creature that ever lived—to this Ghost of the silly Saw-Kimo to be chawed and mumbled alive? To have the bone that is almost knit cracked and sucked.... Whilst YOU run away?"
Something within the woman, not recognisably herself, put this very pertinent question. Who was the speaker?—Unquestionably it was the Totem, the Little Moon of her prayers, so she persisted to her dying day. The innate womanhood of the Master-Girl, that passionate self-devotion, self-immolation, of which the sex in every land and under every manner of garb and rite has proved itself capable,[3] arose and strove. No, she would not go forth safe, alone and humbled; she would die with her man, for her man, indeed, for this matter should be taken fighting.
Tossing her clothing behind her, she stooped and groped right and left, snatching for spears, axes, anything in the darkness.
When she looked again the huge beast had shuffled sidelong past the hot ashes, and was standing over her husband. Pŭl-Yūn had thrown back the hand that held the axe for one last stroke. The bear, just beyond reach, certain of his meal, and perhaps not particularly hungry, or it may be, disposed, as are all beasts of prey, to play with his victim, snarled joyously and half-arose upon his broad haunches, hanging a vast bestial head over the seated man, its pestiferous darkness imperfectly lit by the green glitter of an eye.
Exactly over the brute's head, and between his round ears, Dêh-Yān caught sight of that pale, thin sickle of moon, her moon, her people's god and hers! Her right hand held the broken assegai, her left the longest strung-drill (she had snatched it from the floor in mistake for a spear). There was no time to seek another weapon; the spears, as she now remembered, lay between Pŭl-Yūn and the Ghost-Bear. If there was to be fighting she must fight with this toy, naught else.
With an almost bursting heart she fitted the stump of that broken assegai to the string—I have said it had parted at a knot, the knot-hole provided a natural and quite effective nock. The girl drew suddenly, hugely, and with the strength of her despair until the chert-head lay upon her thumb; she aimed at that green eye and loosed with a cry, "Moon, help me!" The cave hummed to the twang of the cord, the green light of the eye went out. There was a reverberating, snarling roar, the enemy, instead of charging, backed, shaking his head in a horrid agony, and as he reached the sill, having lost his marks, reared and clawing his mask with both paws, fell over the edge backwards—down—and down!
Open-mouthed, incredulous, the youngsters listened for the rasp of claws and the sounds of re-ascent. Instead, after a perceptible interval, came a dull, pounding crash. He had gone to the bottom, taken the full fall, a hundred feet or more. There was moaning, fainter, and more faint. Silence came before daylight showed them the extent of their deliverance and their abounding, enormous wealth.
There at the foot of the cliff lay the dead monster, huddled and broken and burst! Incredible—but true.
Pŭl-Yūn had held Dêh-Yān in his arms for a minute which seemed an hour; neither had spoken whilst the Ghost-Bear's dying was going on, and those gruesome sounds came up from below. For once Dêh-Yān's nerve had failed. She had clung to her husband, dumbly shuddering, conscious of what she still possessed and had so nearly, nearly lost. Of her own escape she was thinking not at all, nor of her amazing feat—at present.