Neither antagonist dared stoop to snatch them up. For several seconds they stood glaring at each other, their breath hissing through clenched teeth, their knotted fingers opening and shutting. Then they sprang at each other’s throats––Grôm in silence, the Black Chief snarling hoarsely. Neither, however, gained the fatal grip at which he aimed. They found themselves in a fair clinch, and stood swaying, straining, sweating, and grunting, so equally matched in sheer strength that to A-ya, standing breathless with suspense, the dreadful seconds seemed to drag themselves out to hours. Then Grôm, amazed to find that in brute force he had met his match, feigned to give way. Loosing the clutch of one arm, he dropped upon his knees. With a grunt of triumph the Black Chief crashed down upon him, only to find himself clutched by the legs and hurled clean over his wily adversary’s head. Before he could recover himself, Grôm was upon him, pinning him to the earth and reaching for his throat. In desperation he set his huge ape teeth, with the grip of a bull-dog, deep into the muscular base of Grôm’s neck, and began working his way in toward the artery. 167
At this moment A-ya glanced about her. She saw two bodies of the Bow-legs closing in upon them from either side––the nearest not much more than a couple of hundred yards distant. Her lord had plainly ordered her to stand aside from this combat, but this was no time for obedience. She snatched up the sharpened fragment of the broken spear. Gripping it with both hands she drove it with all her force into the side of the Black Chief’s throat, and left it there. With a hideous cough his grip relaxed. His limbs straightened out stiffly, and he lay quivering.
Covered with blood, Grôm sprang to his feet, and turned angrily upon A-ya. “I would have killed him,” he said, coldly.
“There was no time,” answered the girl, and pointed to the advancing hordes.
Without a word Grôm snatched up his club, wrenched the broken spear from his dead rival’s neck, thrust it into the girl’s hands, and darted for the narrowing space of open between the two converging mobs.
With their greatly superior speed it was obvious that the two fugitives might reasonably expect to win through. They were surprised, therefore, at the note of triumph in the furious cries of the Bow-legs. A few hundred yards ahead the comparatively open country came to an end, and its place was taken by a belt of splendid crimson bloom, extending to right and left as far as the eye could see. It was a jungle of 168 shrubs some twenty feet high, with scanty, pale-green leaves almost hidden by their exuberance of blossom. But jungle though it was, Grôm’s sagacious eyes decided that it was by no means dense enough to seriously hinder their flight. When they reached it, the jabbering hordes were almost upon them. But, with mocking laughter, they slipped through, and plunged in among the gray stems, beneath the overshadowed rosy glow. Their pursuers yelled wildly––it seemed to Grôm a yell of exultation––but they halted abruptly at the edge of the rosy barrier and made no attempt to follow.
“They know they can’t catch us,” said Grôm, slackening his pace. But the girl, puzzled by this sudden stopping of the pursuit, felt uneasy and made no reply.
Loping onward at moderate pace through the enchanting pink light, which filtered down about them through the massed bloom overhead, they presently became conscious of an oppressive silence. The cries of their pursuers having died away behind them, there was now nothing but the soft thud of their own footfalls to relieve the anxious intentness of their ears. Not a bird-note, not the flutter of a wing, not the hum or the darting of a single insect, disturbed the strangely heavy air. No snake or lizard or squeaking mouse scurried among the fallen leaves. They wondered greatly at such stillness. Then they wondered at the absence of small undergrowth, the lack of other shrubs 169 and trees such as were wont to grow together in the warm jungle. Nothing anywhere about them but the endless gray stems and pallid slim leaves of the oleander, with their rose-red roof of blossom.
Presently they felt a lethargy creeping over their limbs, which began to grow heavy; and a dull pain came throbbing behind their eyes. Then understanding of those cries of triumph flashed into Grôm’s mind. He stopped and clutched the girl by the wrist. “It is poison here. It is death,” he muttered. “That’s why they shouted.”
“Yes, everything is dead but the red flowers,” whispered A-ya, and clung to him, shuddering with awe.