“I will fight you with ax and dart,” replied the other angrily. “They lie on the cave-floor. Are you afraid?”
Wulli stepped back. Pic entered the grotto and reappeared in a moment bearing in his right hand a flint ax-head bound in a stout wooden haft. Several darts tipped with sharp-pointed flakes were in his left. Such were the Ape Boy’s weapons—the stone-ax and short stabbing spear—and not to be despised when a bold heart and powerful arm were behind them.
He laid the darts on the rock platform and took a position upon the edge of the terrace with ax swung over his right shoulder.
“I am ready; now begin,” and he waited for the Rhinoceros to attack.
Wulli aroused himself with a start. This was to be a duel to the death—no light affair,—touch, scratch and both satisfied. Rarely did he so bungle in his work. He lowered his horn, squared his legs and then found himself unable to proceed. That Ape Boy was so deadly calm and looked at him so strangely out of his deep-set eyes. Wulli felt sobered, awed. He would have welcomed violence; but those eyes chilled his marrow. He made one last effort to lash himself into a frenzy but it was no use. His eyes sought the ground; his tail hung limp like a wet string.
“Umph,” he grunted; “I will not fight one who must stay on the ground because somebody has pulled off his tail.”
Pic’s eyes opened wide.
“Who says that?” he growled in a hoarse voice.
“Grun Waugh—and I say it because it makes you angry. ‘Once you had a tail and jumped about in the trees;’ he said that too.”
Pic was fast losing his temper, a fact which now put the Rhinoceros in the best of humor.