In the Morning of Time

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

Following up the plain clue of that tremendous pursuit, Grôm 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 159 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 Grôm 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, Grôm’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 Grôm’s ear. The harangue came soon to an end. The Chief stood up. The bestial crowd parted––and through the opening Grôm 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, 160 like a whipped dog. Grôm, 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 Grôm, 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 massive 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 161 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 Grôm had taught her––she made her throw. The white fungus was split in halves.

With a hoarse 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 Grôm, 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. Grôm hurled one of his two spears. He hurled it with a loathing fury; but he was compelled to throw 162 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 Grôm 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. Grôm 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 shaggy 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 Grôm 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 shore. 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. 163

The bow-legged, shaggy men with their wide, red, skyward nostrils were ranged along the shore, 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 shore 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.