All this took but a second or two, and then I ceased to struggle and only stared at our terrible ursine foe. Halfspoor stood just out of reach, and his actions were brainless, idiotic. He would slash at us viciously, missing us by a foot or so; slap at the side of his head with blows that would have split open a less solid skull; then back up a little, moan, bellow, gnash his tusks, make as if to charge at us—and beat his head again!
I glanced at Dy-lee, who seemed calm and detached. The glint of the bronze tube caught my eye. It was in his mouth and he was blowing into it. I thought of the wooden whistles we make for our children; but there came no noise out of this instrument. My head was, indeed, ringing and pounding from the fight; yet I knew I was not deaf, for Halfspoor was raising the dead with his uproar and I could hear that very well.
It was hardly the time for investigation of mysteries, however. Impatiently I pulled at Dy-lee's arm. The bear would charge. Dy-lee grinned (at least the hair on his cheeks moved as though he had grinned), and throwing back his shoulders and inflating his lungs, appeared to blow a tremendous gust of wind through the metal tube. The dogwolves, who had been snapping at Halfspoor's toes, writhed on their bellies and screeched piteously together, as if they had been disemboweled. Magic! The poor brutes seemed in their last agony.
The knifetooth bear gave one frightful, indignant, stentorian yell, which echoed weirdly from every tree around the glade. He administered a final pummeling to the sides of his tormented head. And he turned and made off into the forest as if all the cave cats in the world were nipping at his tail!
At the same time my eardrums were assailed by the most piercing feel of noise that they had ever experienced. And yet there was no sound from the tube in Dy-lee's mouth.
Now he removed it, stowed it in his secret pouch, laughed quietly to himself, and walking across the mold, bent down and began to gentle the groveling dogwolves. Slowly they responded, sitting up, nuzzling his hands, and whining as if ashamed of their recent performance.
Listening with one ear while rubbing the other, I heard old Halfspoor smashing his way through the woodland, complaining bitterly to himself in a loud voice. I could not blame him. If the stalwart dogwolves were reduced to impotence by the sorcery of Dy-lee's tube, even bruin must be pardoned for running from it.
And then I heard a cry of pain and terror, a human sound that rose and wailed and died to a hideous moaning; and without hesitation I ran off on the bear's trail. He had found someone else in his mad career, and that one had not escaped by magic!
It was easy to see where he had passed. Thickets were crushed, even small trees shattered off, and the bark of the giants shredded by angry clawings. Perhaps I went two hundred yards. Then I found the man, where Halfspoor had found him and snatched him up and flung him aside, broken and dying, into a heap of touchwood.